In Kawasaki

Update

2010-11-03T05:03:00.000-07:00

Sorry I don't seem to have a lot to say in this blog these days. So, I'm working in Nagoya and I like my job. I don't like Nagoya as much as Yokohama or Kawasaki, but it's okay.

I've caught up with a few people but mostly hanging out by myself on the weekend. I've done a bit of sightseeing in the area. I had a long weekend two weeks ago, and went over to Osaka, Kobe and Nara.

The leaves are just starting to change, and it's getting cool.

Here are four pictures: my classroom, Nagoya castle, Nagoya station area, and Atsuta shrine (the most famous shrine in Nagoya).

First day of work

2010-09-28T04:47:00.000-07:00

First day of work today.

In summary:

The university's in a beautiful spot. Right next to a forest - a rarity in Japanese cities, actual nature! - and the university itself is quite bright and modern. It's much smaller than the other universities around, but I like it.

My students are all super lovely. Though I must admit, I had trouble remembering their names and telling them apart. To people who say 'Japanese people all look alike', I've always protested 'no, they don't!' I suppose it is easier when you have a variety of ages, genders, jobs and styles. However, having 35 Japanese girls of the same age, most with very similar hairstyles... it might take me a few days to distinguish them properly. But then, I've always been bad with faces...

The working day is long, and I felt like I worked hard. It was also strange teaching, essentially, the same lesson 7 times in a row. But for a short period, I think it's okay.

I also complained about the commute before. Now that I've done it, it's really not so bad. Two of the three train lines are not very busy, and I could get seats on both of them, both going and returning (this would *never* be possible working in Kawasaki at peak hour) Part of what makes it take so long is the walking to and from stations, but then all the teachers have that same situation. Yesterday I bought a pedometer at a 100yen shop. Today I wore it all day; I did nothing special, just walked to and from work, around the classroom, etc. I walked about 15,000 steps, or about 11km. I shall be very surprised if I gain weight working in this job.

Anyway, apart from the day feeling so long - I teach 8 lessons every day - I am pretty happy with everything right now. ^_^

In Kawasaki

2010-09-25T06:18:00.001-07:00

I was going to say that this blog shouldn't really be called 'In Kawasaki' any longer, because it's become more of an 'in (random city around the world)' blog. However, as it happens, I am actually right now in Kawasaki.

So, to update you on my week, I am living in Nagoya now. I was met at the airport and took the shinkansen into Nagoya, and the day after arriving was a day off. Then we sorted out a few requirements like alien registration, and took the shinkansen back to Tokyo. I am not actually starting work until Tuesday, so I took advantage of the free shinkansen ticket to delay my return a little and stay in Kawasaki for the night. I'm gonna meet a few friends, from Kawasaki and then from the ship, tomorrow. Yay!

My neighbourhood is very, very quiet and residential. I thought I lived in a quiet suburb in Yokohama, but I now realise that wasn't so. I think it's at least a 10 minute walk to even get to a restaurant or conveience store. In my neighbourhood in Yokohama, I had two convenience stores, three supermarkets and at least 20 restaurants within a five-minute walk.

I did a bit of an explore of Nagoya. You know before I was complaining that my commute was long. Well, I still think it is - it's longer than that any other teacher in the city - but there are two perks. One is that I'm in the same apartment building as several other new teachers, and they are lovely. The other is that my commute - and therefore the commuter's pass my company provides me with - covers quite a bit of the city, meaning I can travel to lots of places for free. Every day I'll be travelling through the city centre and hub of activity, so that will be nice.

My apartment is quite good. It's probably slightly smaller than my previous one in Yokohama (those who have been there will hardly think it possible) but the use of space is better so it feels more spacious.

I don't think much of Nagoya at the moment, to be honest, but I expect it'll grow on me.

I was gonna post more about Nagoya, but this keyboard is not very good. The keys keep sticking, so I'll leave it at that.

More updates...

2010-07-22T03:15:00.000-07:00

I guess this will be my last blog update from the boat, as we've only about four days to go.

Since Venezuela, we visited Panama, Guatemala (two days) and Mexico (Manzanillo and Ensenada).

Panama was fun - a bunch of us hired a van and driver for the day and went under the Gatun locks, saw the jungle, went to Porto Bello. Probably not one of the most exciting ports, but it was okay. The day after, we went down the Panama Canal. One of the passengers said it well: "it's first time in my life I've gotten up at 5:30am to spend 2 and a half hours watching some gates open".

It's the third 'bridge day' we've had. That is, a day when the topmost deck is open for passengers to see scenery. The other days were the Suez Canal and the fjords.

Guatemala was one of my favourite countries. It's so beautiful!! And the people were lovely. I'd really like to go back some day.

The first day, we went to Antigua, which is a lovely, picturesque town with cobbledstoned streets, heaps of cafes, and every house painted different colours. I travelled with my roomie and a few Japanese girls.

The second day, some of us went to a volcano. This was the volcano that erupted only a few days earlier. The lava was still smoking as we walked over it!!

I loved the Central American food too. Tacos and nachos and tostadas and guacamole, yum yum. ^_^

Manzanillo and Ensenada were quite different as Mexican ports went. Manzanillo felt like more of a 'real' town. We met a local guy who knew everyone and showed us around. He took us to the docks and some fishermen had just brought in a sailfish, which they were cleaning.

Ensenada, though it looked more like my image of Mexico, had a nasty, insubstantial feel to it, like it was just an inflated tourist town. Everything we passed was for tourists; it didn't feel like a real place. Since this was our last port, lots of us grouped together and had a beach barbecue. A most excellent way to say goodbye to our final port.

Anyway, since I am finally updating again from my own computer, here are some snippets from my real diary, but I haven't had much time to update lately.

June 28

The last couple of days I've been feeling again that I'm a bit tired, that I want a break from being on the ship and with everyone all the time.

I want to spend a whole day by myself doing nothing, without any feeling that it is somehow wrong for me to do so. Not that anyone would really say that, but sometimes I do feel a bit weary.

Anyway, the second day of Venezuela was even better than the first. In the morning I went around La Guaira by myself. In the afternoon I went to the beach with a few young Japanese people.

The beach was a small beach with local people. A lady was surprised that we had found it. How did you know about this beach? she asked. Well, I said, we heard there was a famous beach nearby, and we took the bus here, and the bus driver gestured in this direction as to where the beach was.

As it turned out, we were a little way from the 'main' beach, but the one we were on was safer. She said most of the people here were neighbours who had known each other a long time. In fact, she added, it was the neighbours who had recovered this beach. A few years earlier, it had been buried by a bad mudslide. Even now, some of the five-star hotels around the beach were out of service

She also warned us - as our taxi driver had - to hide our cameras when we left the beach. We didn't need this warning. The Japanese guy with us who was taking the most photos, said that he had taken lots of photos in Caracas. He didn't have any problems, but he encountered lots of well-meaning people advising him to hide his camera. No doubt the danger is real and significant, but it is nice he encountered lots of friendly people concerned about him, and no people who were trying to harm him.

It seems most passengers had a good time in Venezuela and were able to have meaningful exchanges. A couple of people did have incidents, though. A girl had a necklace ripped off her neck, for example.

We met lots of nice people. A lot of local people were interested in the Japanese people.

And it was a nice beach, too! It was kind of a surf beach, so the waves were a bit strong, but it was fun. And the skimpy bikini-clad girls were such a contrast to the last beach I went to - in Aqaba, Jordan.

The food was good too. I had carne mechado(?) and arepas and street stall hot dogs. I tell you, most of the street food is greasy and substantial. It's no wonder most of the people are larger. I noticed it especially after so long with Japanese people - most Venezuelan ladies are a little overweight, and many of them wear tanktops showing cleavage. It sounds like a weird observation on my behalf, but this is so unusual on this boat that it really stood out to me.*

*(Oh, I just remembered a funny moment from the Irish exchange tour. One of the Irish buddies - a middle-aged woman, slightly plump - took off her cardigan, revealing a tanktop and some slightly sagging middle-aged flesh and a bit of cleavage. Nothing bad, nothing dramatic, but the reaction of her elderly Japanese buddies was hilarious: 'aaggh! Put it back on! This is not Japanese style!' It was pretty funny.)

I'm feeling a bit seedy today, like I'm coming down with a cold. I have been very healthy all trip, apart from the first week or two, so I think I've done pretty well.

July 1

How good is this trip!! I'm still feeling a bit like I want to withdraw from people and not be too sociable. But I've had so many good times on this voyage.

Two days ago I went to Jamaica. I went with two teachers and two translators. We spent most of the day at the beach, snorkelling, swimming, lounging around and drinking cocktails. I had a hamburger lunch.

My experience of Jamaica reminded me a little of Vietnam. I enjoyed it, but I felt like I didn't really experience the country, didn't really meet any new people or learn anything. The places we went to were mostly quite touristy. Lots of people calling out to us to try to sell us things. (Since I was with all Japanese people, they called out a lot of "konnichiwa"s. Later, when I mentioned this to one of the girls, she hadn't even realised they were speaking Japanese; their intonation was so unfamiliar.)

July 3

As I type this I'm sitting on the lounge deck. Out the windows the jungles of the Panama Canal are passing by. Yesterday we went to Colon (Cristobal) in Panama, and today we are traversing the Panama Canal.

This morning I got up at 5:30; that is when we were arriving at the Gatun locks, at the mouth of the Panama Canal. Because it is necessary to go uphill into the canal - it is above sea level - we had to enter via a series of gates.

It was a slow process; when we began, it was still dark. There was a ship in front of us, too, so we could see that ship complete the process that we would follow. They opened up the bridge's top deck so we could get a better view.

Basically, as a ship entered one lock, the gates would close, and the water would be poured in, causing the water level to rise - surprisingly quickly, for so much water - raising the ship up to the level of the next lock's water level. It happened so smoothly that you could hardly feel yourself rising. I couldn't see the water pour in, so perhaps it came in from underneath.

The effect is to allow us passage from the Atlantic Ocean (Caribbean Sea) to the Pacific.

This canal used to be operated by the US. Recently it was taken over by the Panamanians. At first, people predicted failure, but they proved more than able at operating it. It costs quite a lot for a ship to pass through this canal, so it is a huge source of revenue for the country.

Actually, the canal has two 'lanes', so to speak, so we have passed various other, huge ships. I think we are the only passenger ship in the vicinity. All the others seem to have 'dangerous goods' written on them in large print...

After several hours, we passed another series of locks. It's interesting passing through the locks; the ship is attached by cables to these cars that run along tracks alongside the canal. I guess theses cars control how fast our ship should go. There is so little space between our ship and the sides of the canal; you look over the edge and all you can see is wall; it's amazing we don't scrape the sides. But once you leave the locks, it's much more spacious, and you can see the Panamanian rainforest and jungle on both sides of the ship.

Today we keep getting announcements to let us know what we're passing. They say that soon we might be able to see crocodiles... what do you think? I don't know... [Note: I didn't see any crocodiles.]

Right at the moment, we are arriving at a third set of locks.

***

We have a lot of guest speakers on this ship. They give lectures and presentations and workshops. As teachers, we often don't have time to attend these. Also, since Japanese is the default language, and we often have to listen to translations through headsets, it's easy to feel that you're only getting a summary of what's being said, and missing the meat of it.

As a result, the international coordinator often organises for us to have 'English-only sessions' with various guest educators. Then we can hear lectures directly, or hear about their lives, or do a Q&A session with them. It's great, because there are some really interesting people on board.

One English session we just had was with a hibakusha (atomic bomb survivor) who experienced the Hiroshima bombing as a 13-year-old.

This is the story she told us, in my words:
"It was August 6, 1945, in Hiroshima. I was 13 years old. At that time, near the end of the war, many school children had been mobilised to help build firebreaks to protect the city. So at that time, there were many children out in the streets, working.

I looked at the sky and saw a plane. I pointed to it; something white came from it. At that moment, I felt a great pressure and was thrown backwards. I was unconscious.

When I woke up, I had lost my senses; I couldn't hear anything, couldn't feel anything, and everything looked dark. I gradually saw people walking, very slowly. It was a horrible sight; I can't even describe it. Their clothes were torn, and they were burned, bleeding badly.

I didn't realise it at the time, because I was so out of it, but I was also badly burnt. 1/4 of my body was burnt.

People were trying to go to the river, a source of water. So I also headed that way. There was a baby crying, which suddenly brought back my hearing. I could hear the baby screaming. The baby, and its mother, were badly damaged. The mother was trying to feed her baby, but she was so hurt, and the baby was covered with burns. Even now, when I close my eyes and remember the sight of that baby, it makes me want to cry.

Everyone wanted to cross the river, thinking that to escape the city would be safer. At that point, I passed out. Someone took me to a school auditorium. I was there for five days, without food, without water. It took all my energy to speak, but I managed to say my name, and address, and asked for water, again and again.

Someone heard me, and they managed to contact my family. Miraculously, my family came. The city was burning, but I couldn't really understand it. I was half-dead, and slipping in and out of consciousness.

When my mother finally came, she was calling my name, 'Where are you? Where are you?' I could only answer in a tiny, weak voice, 'I'm here'. Eventually she found me.

For a long time, my mother wouldn't tell me how I looked when she found me. But I wanted to know. After many years, she finally told me. She said my head was round, like a basketball; swollen. It was black and rough, like toast that has been burnt. Underneath the skin, there was yellow pus, from five days of infection incubating in the hot August summer. So my parents tried to take off the black skin, and rubbed my skin with cooking oil to try to clean it.

For days I was between life and death, and my parents didn't really expect me to live. I had a mosquito net to protect me. The city was full of flies and maggots, thriving on the dead and dying; the whole city smelled terrible. Rescue workers coming in had to cover their faces to breathe.

While I was in the house, others came, with terrible stories. Like my mother's friend, who came crying. Her daughter had been trapped, half-buried, under their collapsed house. The mother couldn't get her free, and then the fire came. She was forced to eave her daughter, who was still alive, to be burned alive. Others made her leave, because she had two other children to care for. This kind of horrible situation was common.

As you know, even many of those who initially survived the bombing, would later suffer from radiation illnesses. My mother and sister both died from radiation poisoning. Since I survived, I feel that I have a mission. I urge you to use your youth, your courage, your energy, and your love, to do something."

July 4

Another first today - having a Japanese lesson in a jacuzzi.

July 7

Feeling a bit more and more like I want to get off the boat...

However, Guatemala was great. I feel really lucky. Seems that every port, I have a great time, and get to do just what I want to do. Considering that this requires hooking up with the right people (the people who are doing the same thing you want to do, at the same time, in the same style, and who are available at the time you want to leave), it's no mean feat.

Speaking of ports, I tried to think of some of the coolest things I did on this trip:

Xiamen, China - seeing 6-year-old Chinese kids breakdancing
Da Nang, Vietnam - riding around the streets of Hoi An on the back of Glen's bike, getting clothes hand-made for me
Singapore - eating a terrific vegetarian meal in Little India, throwing peanuts in Raffles Hotel
Safaga, Egypt - running into the desert sunset
Aqaba, Jordan - going so near the Saudi Arabian border, meeting a huge family of kids, seeing the desert dawn
Port Said, Egypt - making a human pyramid in front of the pyramids
Piraeus, Greece - eating all my fave Greek foods with a view of the Acropolis
Naples, Italy - getting a random personal guide around the Herculaneum
A Coruna, Spain - tapas and red wine
Le Havre, France - finding a random little market in the funky streets around our hostel
Copenhagen, Denmark - eating hot dogs from a street vendor in the rain; finding ourselves in the 'best bakery in Copenhagen', finding snails and ladybugs in the lush greenery
Gdansk, Poland - stumbling across the Corpus Christi festivities and breaking off a tree branch
St Petersburg, Russia - getting off on my own for half an hour to order a cappuccino in a local cafe in RUSSIA!!!
Helsinki, Finland - sitting in a beautiful green park watching some ducklings diving for snacks
Bergen, Norway - seeing the 11pm sunset over the water, setting off through the fjords, second-hand bookstores and an awesome reindeer hot dog!
Dublin, Ireland - finding Oscar Wilde reclining in the park... hearing about the solstice at New Grange... scones at an Irish cafe... the long library at Trinity, and all the intriguing stories on display...
La Guaira, Venezuela - flying around the mountain roads in an open jeep, with views appearing around every bend, and ships flying in the sky
Montego Bay, Jamaica - pina coladas on the white sand beach!!
Cristobal, Panama - imagining a haunt of pirates in an sea-side fortress, the vultures flying around...
Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala - sitting at the foot of the cross... walking on smoking magma from a recent volcano eruption... running along cobblestoned streets in the pouring rain...

July 9

(Manzanillo)

In the afternoon I went with some others, and we met this guy who offered to show us around a bit. He knew everyone in the town - he said the settled population of Manzanillo is not very large - and was calling out greetings to everyone walking past. He took us to the fishing docks. There were brown pelicans flying; ?herons fishing. A fisherman had just landed a big sailfish, and we got to watch them cleaning it. Our self-appointed guide cut off a small piece of the meat and offered it to us. The freshest sashimi I've ever had. ^_^

Then we went to a local bar; we passed heaps of people from our ship sitting at the restaurants along the way, but the bar had only local people. The bar owner - also a friend of our guide - brought us tostadas (fried tortillas) with ceviche, frijoles, guacamole and other things. One of the dishes was lizard tongue???!! With lime juice, it tasted okay.

We had beer - the glasses were rimmed with salt and had a little lemon juice in them. It was zesty and refreshing. ^_^ A rather cute young guy who plays guitar in bars came and played and sung lots of songs for us. He was really good. ^_^

***

There is going to be some kind of singing contest where people try to mimic famous singers. I saw an ad for the applications in the ship paper, but I didn't go. I wasn't very interested in it. But at the teacher's meeting they wanted to have one male and one female teacher participate, and one of the guys was already doing it.

Since I have become known as 'the one who sings', I was the choice.

I decided to do Britney's 'Hit me baby one more time'. Vocally, it's not too difficult, and I can kind of do her voice. I think I can borrow a schoolgirl skirt. I have the other necessary items, if I can get someone to help me braid my hair. (I don't think I can source a blonde wig...)

The problem is I'm not relaxed enough... still not looking forward to the 'being theatrical' bit... I didn't really want to participate in this, and I'm a bit nervous about it, like dancing.

(In some small way, though, I am looking forward to singing on stage a little bit. There is something about being on stage that I do like. When I do get on the stage, I feel like 'oh, these are those familiar faces' - the audience on this ship is not too scary. And this is probably a good step toward more confidence, right? First I sang at acoustic night, just sitting on the floor with other people nearby; not really directed at an audience. Next I sang at the grand finale of the Okinawa festival, with lots of drummers and dancers, but in that case we had a backing band, a co-singer, and it wasn't a competition; all I had to do was just sing.

Now it's actual performance. I guess it will be good for me, right?)

July 12

I feel very good today.

Last night I participated in the talent show. I'm not going to say I was very good, or that I was even one of the better acts. I wasn't. But once I got up on the stage, I felt like a different person. I didn't feel nervous and I enjoyed strutting around.

The best part was afterwards, we went to the fiesta party to say goodbye to the Guatemalan students who are on board. The last few days, we've had some Guatemalan university students on the ship; they've been learning about nuclear abolition (one of the themes of our ship this voyage) and doing some presentations of their own. We have had a number of guests on this ship, but these guys are my favourite guests so far, because they're so friendly and nice, and they all speak English, some of them very fluently.

One of the translators asked me if I'd do the Britney song again for the Guatemalan party, because most of the Guatemalan students had missed the show, since they were upstairs watching a movie about the atomic bombings.

So I did. This time, it was a smaller group and a friendlier atmosphere, and and once I was there I let rip. Actually I like being on stage. ^_^

July 15

Otsukaresama desu! Today was my last day of teaching!

I tried to make it a nice last day - for the last part of class, we had snacks, and chatted, and wrote final messages in the class diary.

We went to Ensenada a few days ago! It was our final stop. We had a great time. Actually, I didn't like Ensenada itself very much. It was so touristy it made me feel rather nauseated. Although we have been to places with a tourist industry - Jamaica was full of tourist shops, and so was Hoi An, in Vietnam - this was the first place where I felt like 'there's nothing to this town *except* tourist shops'.

Of course we only went to the main streets near the port, so it may be that Ensenada at large is a wonderful town, full of culture and vibrancy.

I did enjoy some coffee, quesadillas and a fish taco (the local specialty), though. ^_^

Anyway, we got out of the town and bought loads of groceries at a supermarket, and betook ourselves to the beach. Some of the guys had, unbelievably, bought portable barbecues in Norway(!). By portable barbecue, I mean tinfoil packages with coals inside and grills on the top that could be set on rocks, lit, and afterwards filled with sand to extinguish them.

We set up on the beach and had a marvellous barbecue, and really relaxed. There were about 12 of us.

July 21

Aaahhh... the teaching program is finished at last. The last few days were supposed to be the grand finale. Unfortunately I got rather sick again - seems my last week on the boat is mirroring my first week on the boat - and couldn't fully enjoy them. So I am really glad that today is a free day to relax.

Yesterday I spent the whole day in the showroom. Sorry, that was a lame joke. Actually, I did. Yesterday was only one hour.

See, as we've been travelling west, we've had many 'jisas'. 'Jisa' means 'time difference'. Usually it means putting the clock back an hour, though a couple of times we had half-hour jisas, and we also had some jisas where we lost an hour's sleep.

After losing so many hours - the time difference between the ship and Japan growing all the time - we finally hit July 20, which was designated a one-hour day, when we would cross the dateline and essentially regain all our lost hours. So when the clock hit midnight on July 19, it became July 20 for an hour, after which the clocks were turned back an hour, and it became midnight of July 21st.

On July 20th they had an event in Broadway which was 'one day in one hour'. It was really funny. They took us through a fast version of a typical day on the ship. if you are interested, such a day consists of:
-guy in a bandana shouting at the sunrise
-radio stretching exercises
-morning prayer chanting
-introduction of famous historical figures
-open English/Spanish class
-lunch
-self-planned event scheduling
-events
-taiko drumming
-port orientation
-etc etc

***

Anyway, that's enough diary from me. Next time I write I'll be in Japan again. Looking forward to seeing you again soon. ^_^

Hello again

2010-07-06T17:26:00.000-07:00

A quick 'hi' from Guatemala! This is the best internet cafe I've ever been to. Actually, it's not an internet cafe - it's a waterside restaurant with free wifi, not far from the ship. We're sitting outside next to some palm trees, looking over a pier - straw-thatched buildings, yachts, the Caribbean, and a beautiful sunset.

Today we went to Pacaya volcano - which erupted only a couple of weeks ago - and walked over the smoking black lava. It wasn't hot to the feet, but smoke was steaming over it, so desolate it felt like being in Mordor.

Yesterday we went to the beautiful town of Antigua.

Next stop is Mexico - two ports - and finally, back to Japan!

Buenos dias!

2010-06-26T09:05:00.000-07:00

Buenos dias! I am now writing to you from hot and sunny Venezuela. We crossed the Atlantic without incident.

Well, what to say?

-I had a great time in Europe. In Ireland I saw New Grange, Tara Hill, Trinity College and the Book of Kells, Oscar Wilde´s house, as well as various city attractions.

-It got hotter and hotter as we left Europe. Europe was sunny and warm, but never hot. Now it´s reaaally warm and humid again. Tank top and icy drink weather.

-I think my favourite European stop was Bergen. We unexpectedly arrived there the night before, so we could go into the town at night. I went around by myself - I like to do that sometimes - and the weather was gorgeous, and the town so picturesque.

It already seems so far away from here. Bergen´s was a beauty of colourfully painted, wooden houses, a port full of yachts, people sitting outside with beers and coffees, little rambling streets. Here, it´s a beauty of tropical butterflies and frangipani... but this town itself is not very beautiful, it´s rather ramshackle and dirty. There is a lot of Latin music driving past, though. Every bus is like a nightclub. As I sit here I can hear many snatches of fun songs.

-Yesterday a big group of us went up a mountain in a couple of jeeps. Our ship is currently docked in La Guaira, Venezuela. From the ship you can see masses of green mountains. It´s all very tropical, and as you go up, you can see more rainforest. I saw a hummingbird. From the top of the mountain, we took a cable car down into Caracas. We didn´t stay in Caracas so very long, but it was interesting to see. We enjoyed a beer, sitting outside and looking at the mountains.

Venezuela is said to be very unsafe - everyone is continually warning us to be careful - and to be sure, Caracas didn´t give the impression of being a very nice place. There were lots of slums, and the taxi driver said that in traffic jams, you should concel electronics and valuables because people may be in the tunnels etc looking into the cars.

Everyone is quite World Cup mad, including several teachers on our boat, so they are very happy now, finding places to sit and watch the soccer in.

Our ship has been to Venezuela before and has quite a good relationship with this country, so last night there was a big open-air cultural exchange festival. It was rather nice. Some Venezuelan people and Japanese people did performances and dances, and some Japanese people set up booths, writing local people´s names in calligraphy, teaching the children origami, and helping them try on kimono. There was a nice vibe.

This morning I´m just wandering around the port area on my own - that´s where I am now. I just had a carne mechada, yum yum yum. Soon I´m gonna meet some friends and we´ll go to the beach. It´s very nice beach weather.

-The ship gives lots of opportunities to slip in and out of different roles. This last week I become a singer, a librarian, and an Olympic team captain. I did my own little event where people brought books to borrow or lend. We had our ´language Olympics´ on the ship, and my team won. :) And I sang a duet (in Japanese) for the grand finale of an Okinawan event they were having on the ship. I´ve sung in front of an audience a few times on this trip, actually. I really enjoy it. :)

Anyway, that will do from me now. This web connection is not very good so I can´t do anything too ambitious on here. Hope you are all well!

Quick update

2010-06-15T08:52:00.001-07:00

Just a quick wee update to say I'm currently in Dublin. Beautiful weather. Nice food. Europe has been great. I've just been to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells.

One weird thing about travelling around the world on boat like this is that world news suddenly becomes more relevant. Flooding in Poland - oh, we're going to Poland shortly. Riots in Greece - oh, I hope things are calm when we arrive there... Oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico... will it spread to where we are soon to travel?

Anyway, too much to say, not much time. Busy busy. ^_^

Take care!

Latest updates

2010-06-06T09:41:00.000-07:00

May 30

So what happens when we arrive at a port?

Basically, we have a scheduled arrival time and departure time for each port. So far we have been pretty good at arriving and leaving at approximately those times. Despite travelling several days between places, we generally do arrive roughly when estimated, with two exceptions. In Port Said, at the end of the Suez Canal, we arrived several hours earlier than anticipated, and in Xiamen, a few hours later than anticipated (due to the fog, we couldn't dock).

A little while after docking, announcements will start coming thick and fast. Some of these are for people joining tours, to meet at certain places on the boat. We all wait for our announcement that all passengers can leave the ship, today the gangway will be on level __.

The gangway moves all the time and I'm often surprised to see how many parts of the ship are capable of suddenly becoming a gangway. I guess each port is at a different height. Usually we come off the ship onto the ground, but sometimes onto a second or third floor of a dock.

Since you don't know exactly when the announcement will come, everyone tends to get up and get ready very early. If you leave late, you tend to end up on your own. If you want to hang out with other people, you have to be ready as soon as the announcement comes. So if the estimated arrival time is 7am, it's likely we won't get off the ship until 8, but people tend to be up by 6:30 or earlier. Sometimes the ship arrives early, or it takes very little time to be allowed to go on land.

When we get on or off the boat, our ship ID card is scanned, to keep track of our movements and to register what time we get back. We all have something called 'kisen limit' (in Japanese 'kisen' means 'return to the boat', aka boarding deadline). This is a very serious business and we have had the fear of missing kisen firmly ingrained into us. ^_^

(This ship ID card is a very important item on the boat. We also use it to pay for all purchases on the boat. Then at the end of the month we get a bill or our credit card is deducted, etc.)

Once we get into the port, we who are travelling around freely usually just wander on out of the port. Sometimes this is a very short stroll, sometimes a long one. Sometimes the port terminal is a fancy place with shops, glass buildings, other cruise ships; sometimes it's a long stretch of dirty ground and you walk past shipping crates and whatnot to get out.

Then, some ports have customs, with 'declare' and 'nothing to declare' lanes, or immigration people checking your passport or ID card, or a luggage scanner to put your bags on. Others have nothing and you can pretty much just walk straight off the ship into the town.

Different ports also differ in their proximity to things. In Xiamen, the ship terminal was some way from the city centre - there was nothing at all near the terminal - and everyone had to take taxis. In Naples and A Coruna, you could see the town right next to the ship; in both of those cities, I ate at restaurants and then took a 10-minute stroll back to the boat. In Le Havre, Piraeus and Aqaba, you had to walk a little into town, but the towns themselves were not the highlights; we all took buses and trains and taxis from those places to their more famous spots.

In Port Said, some people had set up a miniature souvenir market immediately around the boat's gangway; you had to walk the market to get out of the port. In Singapore, they had the most official-looking port and facilities, and the terminal itself was a hub of shopping and eating, and connected to the MRT metro.

So each port is different, but generally the process is much quicker and more painless than arriving in an airport. That's because the boat keeps our passports and mostly does the immigration procedures for everyone, en masse, before we get off.

***

Tonight Aida and I ate in our rooms. She had leftover sausage and baguette, while I had two-minute noodles. The reason for this was tonight's menu:
Appetisers: cold tofu, grated yam
Soup: pickled plum soup
Main: beef tongue in miso sauce, rice with buckwheat

It sounded like a bit of a low...

Anyway, ports are coming so thick and fast now that I don't even need to attend every meal on the boat. I have been gutsing myself in every European port so far. I remember each port in terms of its food. The moussaka in Greece, the pizza in Napoli, the tapas in Spain, the pain au chocolat in France... and everywhere, the fresh, delicious bread, and cappuccinos. ^_^

I have to say, we have done well, food-wise, in every port we've visited. I love Vietnamese food, Middle Eastern food, European... It makes me think how nice most countries' cuisine is, especially when compared with Japan...

Yesterday we came back from our two-day port in France. We have four or five two-day ports on this ship. This is the first one I did without being in a big group, and the first I did in a country that's easy to make your way around using public transport. As a result, it's the first time I really felt like I got off the boat, and into proper 'travel mode'.

With Vanessa, I took the train into Paris. We found a youth hostel in the Latin quarter, and ate lots of things, and walked around the Ile de la Cite, and saw the Eiffel Tower at night. The next day we split up for a few hours and I went to the Louvre and Montmartre, and ate lots of things. ^_^

I had two pain au chocolat. and a crepe with chocolate and coconut, and a chocolate brownie. A good port for chocolate. ^_^ I also had cider, and cappuccinos, and espresso in a little cafe late at night, and salmon steak, and beautiful fresh baguettes, and a kebab. ^_^

May 31

Today was a teaching day, and I also did a self-planned event. This is one of the things you can do on this ship, which is one of the things that makes the ship so interesting.

(I already mentioned some of the events we see in the paper. Today's paper has a few beauties as well.

"Let's sing the Constitution together". This event run by some of the cool young things who every day shout at the sunrise or sunset.

Now we have rival 'shouting at the sun' events. The sunrise event says, 'Shout your dreams and hopes to the rising sun. Sunrise is better than sunset.' The sunset event says 'Shout your dreams and hopes to the setting sun. Sunset is better than sunrise.'

***

Just coming back to my diary writing. I've just been up to the deck for a wee bit of a dance and drink. We are currently in the North Sea, not far from Copenhagen, Denmark. The days are getting longer and longer. Sunset was around 10pm, but we just counted down to midnight - happy new month! - and there was still the faint remnant of sunset on the horizon even then. I guess for the next couple of weeks we will not see true darkness even late at night. It's almost the longest day of the year, after all, and we are near the Arctic Circle. Although we will not see a true midnight sun, we'll get a pretty close effect.

It was lovely. Actually, there were several other cruise ships dotting the horizon, and faint twinkling lights in the distance.

Now it is June 1.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah, I did my own self-planned event today. Somehow in the newspaper it got bumped up to the status of 'official ship event', and I had an audience of over 100; the room was quite full. I had an interpreter to translate every sentence. You might think this would be difficult, but actually it makes presenting much more cruisy. I've never done a real presentation in my life, but with the translation, I talked for almost an hour and felt most relaxed, sitting down with my notes on my lap. When you are being interpreted, it doesn't matter if you often consult your notes or even if you read some parts verbatim.

Since we are in Europe now and lots of people are going to art galleries in various ports, I talked about religious art, using examples from galleries we are actually visiting. Basically I talked about different events from the life of Jesus - this is the nativity story, this is the baptism, this is his first miracle, etc - and told them the story of each event. Like I used Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' on the screen while I talked about the events of the Last Supper. It seemed to work quite well, and I was pleased so many people came. Like, more than 1/9 of the entire ship attended, I think. We have about 900 passengers at the moment.

One of the things this boat does is have 'guest educators' onboard. We call them 'mizuan', which literally is a nickname for 'navigator'. Some are Japanese, some from other countries, like Korea, India, America, Germany. This is one of the main duties of the interpreters on board.

Most mizuan have credentials in global issues, peace, etc. A few have particular skills. We had a Korean lady who was a professional bellydancer; she came on and gave performances and also taught bellydancing classes. We've had experts on the Palestinian refugee situation and Middle Eastern conflicts, American imperialism, sustainability and World Heritage sites, atomic bombs and nuclear issues, and so on.

Tonight we had an American lady, a songwriter who also works in peaceful conflict resolution, give a concert, while also talking a little about her work. It was very chilled and cool, and since it was in the bar, we could order drinks while we listened to the show, without even leaving our seats. ^_^

The nice thing about having an English-speaking mizuan is that I feel like I get all the songs and jokes and comments first-hand, rather than through a translator.

Speaking of the interpreters, we have a team of them on the ship. They're fluent in English and Japanese - a couple can speak Spanish too. With us teachers, we are the 'international division'. So we teachers share rooms with the translators. Currently I room with a Spanish teacher, a Japanese-English interpreter, and soon, a Japanese-English-Spanish interpreter who will be joining our boat - and our room - from Dublin.

Anyway, it's past midnight and we arrive at Copenhagen early tomorrow - about 7am. So I really ought to get to bed. Goodnight! ^_^

June 1

Today was Copenhagen. I had a very nice time, though the weather was cold and rainy. I went with three of the interpreters. Nice people.

If Copenhagen is famous for anything, it is famous for the statue of the Little Mermaid, as Hans Christian Anderson was Danish. This statue is said to be one of the 'three most disappointing sights of the world'. Hahaha.

Our ship docked near the mermaid. However, she wasn't in town. That's because she had been airlifted out of the harbour and taken to Shanghai to be put in an exhibition there. In her place, they put up a screen showing where she was in Shanghai. That is, they had a video link to the exhibition in Shanghai and you could see all the Chinese people walking past looking at her.

I am not making this up.

So we got our pictures taken in front of a screen where the mermaid would have been.

It was pretty funny. I thought it was probably much more interesting than the real thing. On the way back, it was obviously night in Shanghai, and she was looking pretty lonely. The only person we saw was the cleaner who was doing the floors... ha ha ha...

Apart from the mermaid, I hadn't heard of any of Copenhagen's attractions before this trip, nor had I done any research. So we just walked and walked around the city; later, I saw postcards and matched places to names - 'oh, that was the royal palace... oh, that fountain was a famous fountain...' We saw the outside of Tivoli, and walked the Strogat, and climbed a tall church tower for a view over the city, in the wind and rain.

It was a really lovely city though. Not only did it have the pretty buildings, like France and Spain and Italy did, but it had lush greenery; willows, reeds, grassy riverbanks, and lots of flowers. The city had lots of canals. Although it was rainy, it was really lovely. We enjoyed it very much.

One of the nicest things was the smells. There were so many flowers... freshly mown lawns... the smell of grass wet with the rain... being on a boat, you really appreciate greenery when you see it. In Greece it was also really nice to see all the trees and flowers, after being in the Middle East, and before that two weeks at sea. It was about three weeks between Singapore and Greece, so three weeks without seeing much nature, except ocean and desert.

In Denmark, I forgot my credit card. Luckily I had some Aussie dollars stashed in my bag for just such an emergency, and I could change it. When you change Aussie dollars into kroner, it doesn't get you very far. Fortunately, all four of us were on a bit of a budget, so nobody was wanting to go to fancy restaurants or even into fee-charging museums.

Denmark is expensive, as you can imagine. However, it wasn't as bad as I expected. It's not actually much worse than Adelaide; Adelaide isn't cheap, you know. But compared to the other countries we'd visited, it felt pricy.

I still managed to eat some good local specialities. ^_^ This time I had a hot dog from one of the many stands in the city streets ('a quintessentially Danish experience', said our guidebook), a strawberry tart and foccacia from what a local told us was 'the best bakery in all of Copenhagen', a chocolate danish (a Danish danish ^_^) and some nougat icecream. Yummm. What a bad eater I am. ^_^

I also had a cappuccino in a cafe that had been raided by armed police over 4000 times in the last 6 years. It claimed to be the safest cafe in the world. No need for hired security; the police were so constantly nearby. That's because this cafe was in Christiania, an 'alternative' community in Copenhagen, and it was full of people smoking reefers.

So, Christiania was originally settled by squatters, but it grew into a proper town, populated by hippies and artists and anarchists... the idea is that it would be a real community. It's interesting to see, full of public artwork and dilapidated but picturesque houses, strange and funny signs, car-free streets, their own postal system, cannabis freely for sale and being very publicly smoked despite being technically illegal in Denmark, a 'no photos in the town centre' policy (due to all the people smoking illegal drugs).

Despite the supposed communal, hippie-ness of the area, we thought it didn't have a very friendly vibe. I wouldn't have felt very comfortable there on my own. It was definitely the most interesting place we visited though; very green, with a river running through the area, and quite funky to look around.

One reason I enjoyed Denmark is because I didn't have any preconceptions, or particularly high expectations. I just went there and looked around and it was nice. We saw Hans Christian Anderson Boulevard, and saw ladybirds on the grass, and smelled amazing pastries baking. There were lots of public statues and fountains.

Although it is the largest city in Scandinavia, it felt pretty quiet. Apart from the size of the main shopping street, it could have been Adelaide, people-wise. And the shops even closed at 5, 5:30.

In the port orientation they pointed out that Scandinavian countries are known for their good design and efficient systems. We saw lots of great products, furniture, homewares, and design shops. We saw a pond that had a little ramp built into the side - so that ducks could easily get in and out! They also had a little duck house on the pond itself! We saw a building with flowers and plants growing out of the walls - like, the wall itself was a garden.

On the street some people had bicycles with big carts in the front, where a child could ride, or you could transport goods. The city had a system of free bikes - just put in a deposit - that you can ride within the city limits. Copenhagen is a very bike-friendly city, with decent bike lanes. My friend saw someone charging their electric car.

My other impression of Denmark was that the people were the most genuinely friendly of any port so far. Or perhaps it was because almost everyone could speak English very fluently, so we could communicate more freely. But people smiled more; they felt more relaxed. Several people helped us, they made chitchat.

You know, every time we come back from a port and we all ask the 'what did you do?'s, there's a tiny undercurrent of one-up-manship. Or rather, you want to find out if other people seemed to have had a better time than you. Did you have the best possible time you could have had?

Generally what happens is I'm very happy with each port (except Italy), but there's usually like one thing I feel envious about or wish I had been able to do.

Like in France I wished I could have found the most interesting part of Montmartre, like my other friends did. I went to Montmartre but wandered around the lower part, not able to find my way to the more arty part of it.

In Jordan I very nearly had a perfect time, but I felt my friends had a slightly better camping experience (we were in tents; they were out under the stars, and with probably a slightly clearer view of the stars than us).

In Denmark, I kind of wish I had gotten a free coat from the free clothes 'shop' in Christiania. It was like a communal dumping ground for old clothes. But none of the interpreters I was with wanted to consider taking any of the clothes, so I didn't either. But later I found out that three of my teacher friends did it. And now they have 'new' coats, which fit them quite well and kept them warm all day (I was pretty cold).

And if someone finds a good deal and buys some cute top or cheap shoes, I think 'I could have used that, if only I'd noticed that... I wish I could have bought something too'.

Anyway, it's petty to think like this, and all things considered, I have probably had as good an experience as it's possible to have. ^_^

In each country I have tried to at least say 'hello' and 'thank you' in the local language. It's pretty easy in Danish, as 'hello' is 'hi', and 'thank you' is 'tak' (I don't know about the spelling). We were also amused to see signs for the 'Pissoir'. This became our favourite word throughout the day.

I walked heaps and heaps and heaps, as with every port.

From now we shall soon enter the Baltic Sea. Next stop, Gdansk, Poland.

June 3

Today Poland dawned cold and grey and gloomy. A second Denmark, we thought, and prepared accordingly. In Copenhagen my umbrella got a lot of use, and I lamented my lack of warm coat and gloves. In Poland I brought them all. My roomie joked about bringing the sunscreen.

It turned into an idyllic, sunny day, and I am now sunburnt!!

The weather was so wonderful, and it made a beautiful city even more beautiful.

We arrived in Gdansk and took a bus to the Old Town. This is small and easily walkable, and the whole place looks like a work of art. I have taken innumerable photos of buildings in various European cities, and Gdansk was certainly no exception.

Part of the joy of the day was that again, I had almost no expectations at all. I had done no research; knew nothing about the place; had never even seen a picture. If I had thought about it at all, my mental image of Poland would have probably consisted of gloomy skies, dark Soviet-style architecture, and rather dour, unfriendly people. I'd never been to Eastern Europe before, but that would have been my idea.

All wrong. The sky was blue and one of the nicest days we've had on the whole voyage. All the houses and buildings were painted different colours; the place was full of churches and beautiful buildings; the main street was lined with busy cafes; and every Polish person we met, from the bus driver to the shopkeepers, was genuinely friendly and helpful, with lovely smiles and functional English.

We were lucky to be there. ^_^

I went around with my roomie Aida again, and she is good company. A nice day for pottering around. We got an audio guide of the city so we could stop at key points and listen to info about it. It was Corpus Christi Day, a religious event and public holiday, so we couldn't do much shopping, but some lovely bakeries and restaurants were open, and we also saw the day being celebrated at local churches. People broke off ?birch branches to take home and put in their home for a blessing. I brought one back to my cabin and it's filling our cabin with a fresh leafy smell.

Our time in Poland was shorter than most ports - we arrived just after 6am, and had to be back on the boat by 4:30. For the first time I decided I didn't care about getting outside the second the gangway opened - I did not want to get up at 5:30am - so I didn't leave until just after 8. It was okay though, since it was a small town.

Two days until Russia. Alas, we are now heading east, which means that tonight the time difference works against us, and we have to turn our clocks an hour forward, rather than back. Oh well, we'll soon be westward-bound again. ^_^

The travel is lovely but it does get rather tiring, particularly when you have work between ports. I will sleep very well tonight. ^_^

June 4

Today - or tomorrow - is exactly the halfway point of this voyage.

We set our clock forward again tonight. I believe tomorrow night, the sunset will be around 11pm, and the sunrise around 2am. Cool!

Oh, we have a nice custom. You know how each teacher has one or two ports to speak about and prepare and orientation for? Well, whoever did the port orientation buys a couple of snacks in that country. Then they bring them to the next meeting. In this way, we all get to try lots of different snacks from all around the world.

I haven't written much about my classes or my students. I like all of them and I often see them out and about on the boat and in ports. I feel happy to see them and wave but I don't generally hang out with them much. Actually I usually hang out with other teachers or translators; people I can speak with fluently.

I've been basically designing a curriculum and all my lesson materials from scratch. Because I have two different levels, the lesson content is usually quite different for each class.

So I've been teaching some practical travel-style English this term. Today my beginners did a review lesson which included asking about buses and trains, ordering at a restaurant, asking for directions and going shopping.

Most of the time I am not that inspiring, but I have done a few cool things, some of which wouldn't be possible in a normal classroom. For example:

-Another teacher and I swapped classes for ten minutes one day. He had given his students some questions to interview me with; I had gotten my students to prepare some questions to ask him about his culture.

-With five other teachers and a few other people, we organised a kind of 'directions scavenger hunt'. Basically we all pretended to be different buildings and went in different parts of the ship. I was the post office and waited in the ship's store. We put our students into small groups - so they were with people from different classes - and they had to go through a list of places, asking directions to the next place. I directed people to the Tower, which was upstairs outside. ^_^

-For my other class, when we did 'directions', I prepared a little list of instructions I had written. They had to take turns to read the directions, listen and follow them. Then they must write the answers to questions. (For example, 'turn right and go straight. Go past the toilets and up one floor. Turn left and left again. Look on the wall. What number is written there?')

-When we did our lesson on restaurants, I used examples from real ship life. Because most of the crew on the ship speak far more English than Japanese, it's a good opportunity for them to practise. So how can you ask them for hot water from the bar, or for today's extra at dinner time? Then for homework they had to order in English at the restaurant or bar, and ideally at a port also. ^_^

-We did a section on 'understanding the English-language announcements on the ship'. I recorded a real announcement, and a couple of teachers doing pretend announcements, and we looked at some of the language in them. ^_^

-For the oldies, we did a lot of practise of 'how was __?' and 'what did you do?' and so on. This could naturally be reviewed every class after a port, as we talked about what we did.

It is the first time I have ever had classes consistently with the same members. In Japan, students could freely change class times, and I often had different people. In Australia, I had my classes once or twice a week, but shared those classes with other teachers. This is my first time to be only with the same group of students. It's made it possible for me to build in more review and a few class routines.

For example, each class has a class diary. Every class, they give it to the next person, who takes it home to write their entry. In my oldies class, they like to read the previous person's entry aloud before passing it on. In my ladies' class, they just pass it on.

Another example is the vocabulary. In the first term I did a 'vocabulary box', where students would write new words and every few lessons I would quiz them on some words, or have them quiz each other. This term I am having them choose the 6 most useful words they learned that lesson, to write down and then every two lessons we do a kind of quiz. I like that.

June 5

Today we went to St Petersburg.

Now, due to visa requirements, all of us who went there had to join a tour. Because it would be unbearable for us to join a Japanese tour, they organised a special tour for the KSB (kokusai-bu, 'international division'). This was a free tour, but it didn't include very much.

So they took us by bus to the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood, and we got out and took some photos, and they took us on foot to a place called Art Square, where there was a statue of Pushkin.

On the way we passed the Grand Hotel Europe, a very fancy hotel that many famous people, including former Russian presidents, had stayed in. We saw the price list... 36,000 rubles for the cheapest room (I think US $1200?), 600,000 for the Presidential Suite ($20,000)...

---

Okay, I haven't written any more diary and I'm using free wifi in Finland. I have to go soon so I can go back to the boat, so I'd better not write any more. I had a good time in St Petersburg and a great time here in Helsinki. The weather is brilliant and it's a Sunday so everyone is relaxing and having fun.

jordan and middle east

2010-05-26T06:43:00.000-07:00

May 14

What a port! I've just fallen in love with Jordan.

We went to Egypt the day before, in a big group, and lots of long minibus rides and big tourist spots. Not much interaction with anyone, not much time to linger and stroll the streets. Egypt was pretty cool, but Jordan...

It started when we - my roomie and I - somehow got off the boat a bit later than everyone else. I had intended to join four or five others - including a couple of guys - but we missed them. You hear many things about the Middle East (although Jordan is less strict than most Middle Eastern countries), and in our port orientations we were told several times, 'try to stay in a group; girls, it's better if you can travel with a guy', etc.

So it was with a little trepidation that the two of us set off alone from the port at Aqaba. It turned out to be a blessing. I felt like I enjoyed it much more than Egypt. We didn't rush, and we met lots of people. Travelling in a big group is good for safety, I guess, but it's all too easy to not interact properly with the country you're in; it becomes hard to make decisions; it's easy to just kind of sit back and let other people make the decisions about where you're going to go next, what you're going to do.

We managed to do the budget tour of Jordan. We took a bus to Petra, then at Petra we met a Spanish couple who took us to Wadi Rum and invited us to join their desert camping site. The next day, the same couple took us back to Aqaba, where we chilled for the afternoon.

We met lots of lovely people in Jordan. Our first impression was not great, with lots of guys trying to convince us to get in their taxis, but once we got past them, there was the shopkeeper who gave us directions and free map, the old newspaper seller who took us to the right bus for Petra, the minivan driver who gave us advice about going around Petra... Pretty well everyone in the shops and restaurants, everyone working, was a man. The first lady we met was a Jordanian nurse on the bus.

We were both conservatively dressed and wearing headscarves/bandanas. Some guys did stare a bit, but it wasn't really intense; I never felt uncomfortable about it. My roomie got into a habit of calling out 'salam alekum' (peace be with you) to almost everyone we passed, which prompted many people to wish us peace (alekum es salam) in return. Lots of people asked us where were were from, what our names were. Many people said, not 'welcome', but 'you're welcome'. I liked that. I felt welcome.

Apparently my name was difficult to remember, so I have the new Arabic name of Baraka (this is what someone mispronounced my name as).

The ladies in Jordan all wore headscarves of some kind; some wore jeans and shirts, or long coats, while a few wore the full black burqa, entirely covered but for their eyes. Many men wore Western clothes, others Arabic dress (I don't know what they're called), and quite a few of them also wore head coverings. It's good against the hot, bright sun. I got a lot of vitamin D in the Middle East. ^_^

Our impression was that Jordan was pretty chilled. People ambled around the streets; nobody seemed in a hurry. Families and friends sat in the shady park and chatted or napped. In the evening, lots of people sat around at the beach, drinking cups of tea from the chai sellers, or smoking sheesha, the children and men playing in the water.

People who tried to sell us things weren't persistent and didn't follow us; they'd offer once or twice and then leave us alone. It was pretty hot, and the town wasn't really built-up - lots of small shops, no skyscrapers - so it didn't lend itself to a fast-paced lifestyle.

Compared to Egypt, I felt like people were more relaxed and friendly. Most people had lighter skin, and some had light eyes. There were posters of the king of Jordan everywhere. The scenic main highway was called 'The Kings Way', and all the main roads and parks in Aqaba were named after princes and princesses.

The sightseeing was great. It took over two hours to drive from Aqaba to Petra, so we could see a lot of countryside.

Jordan is very dry; so much desert and great rock formations; the whole countryside varying shades of red and brown and yellow. However, it didn't seem as inhospitable and barren as the desert around Safaga, Egypt. There were hardy desert grasses, the odd eucalyptus tree, some patches of green, birds. Like Egypt, though, I found it remarkable that people could live there. You'd see some guy, in the middle of the desert, near nothing at all, driving a small herd of goats... or our bus would stop in the middle of nowhere and let someone out, when there was nothing but bare desert for miles around.

The ancient town of Petra was quite an amazing sight to see. I knew very little about it, but I now know that some of the rock formations were in the movie 'Mission to Mars' (or was it 'Mars Attacks'? I forget) and the ancient treasury featured in Indiana Jones (it was where the Holy Grail was). Hahaha... okay, I did learn more than just that. ^_^ But I can't say anything very interesting about Petra; a picture will do more than any words.

Wadi Rum is a desert, kind of between Aqaba and Petra, popular for 4WD drives, camping with Bedouin tribes, camel treks, etc. Again, the landscape is pretty amazing. We stayed at a campsite. These campsites are marketed as Bedouin camps, with Bedouin guides and hospitality, but they are set up for tourists; you're not actually staying with Bedouin families (though this is also possible). You have a little camp set up in the middle of nowhere, with three or four guys looking after things. There were also some pet cats eager to greet us.

Dinner was awesome - a kind of barbecue with shish kebabs and sausages and hommous and tzatziki and salads and pita bread and many delicious things. Actually, everything we ate in Egypt and Jordan was brilliant. ^_^ They turned the generator and the lights off for a while, so we all sat around in silence and looked at the stars in the silence. We saw a shooting star, and lots of satellites.

After that we sat around a campfire and drank Bedouin tea with rosemary, and smoked a narghile (sheesha, or water pipe), and everything was great.

There were eight of us at the camp; four pairs of people. We got up just after 5 to see the sunrise. Since the sun rose behind some great rock formations, it took a while, but we saw the light increasingly creeping across the valley. Breakfast included pita bread baked over the campfire, with fresh yoghurt.

The friendly couple who drove us around took us back to Aqaba but first they stopped off at their hotel. Aqaba is on the coast of the Red Sea, so it has lots of beaches and palm trees. It's a popular spot for diving. From their hotel we could stand on the dock and see lots of fish.

We spent several hours doing Aqaba on the cheap. We spent ages just sitting in parks. Several kids came up to talk to us. At one point, about nine kids gathered around and convinced us to come up and say hi to their parents. None of them spoke any English (beyond 'What's your name?' and a couple of other words), and our Arabic was mostly limited to greetings and 'shukran' (thank you), but we were able to communicate a little. They managed to explain that they were two families, and tried to point out the relationships - sister, mother, brothers. The ladies asked if we were married (actually, several of the ladies we met asked us this). No, we said. 'Enshallah' (God willing), they said. Hahaha.

I drew pictures for them and showed them some pictures on my camera. They all wrote their names in English for me. The oldest ones did fine, but one of the younger girls couldn't remember beyond 'S' (her mother rolled her eyes). Then one of the boys remembered that he could say 'I love you', so we got a big round of 'I love yous' and pictures of love hearts in my notebook. They departed with lots of smiles and handshakes and 'see yous'. ^_^

Aqaba was an interesting place. On one side, all desert; on the other, all palm trees and beach sands. In the beaches and the parks were almost only local people, but the streets in between were full of tourist shops selling souvenirs, and that's where we saw other Westerners.

Anyway, I have been writing for a long time - sitting in the free space part of the ship, drinking tea - and now I am sitting on the outside deck, since the weather is so lovely. A few minutes ago I saw three dolphins, jumping alongside the ship.

I still need to write about Egypt, but I will leave that until another time. ^_^

Egypt

We stopped in Safaga, Egypt, for one and a half days, and we packed a lot into that time. Too much, I now feel. Because Luxor is considered a 'must-see' place, we felt we must see it, but if I had my time again, I'd probably just go to Hurghada and chill out in a hotel, walk around the town, etc.

The trouble was, we had heard that it would take about 3 1/2 hours by car from Safaga to Luxor, but in reality it took about 5. We travelled in a big group - about 18 of us at first, later pared down to 13 or so.

This was our Egyptian itinerary:
-get a minibus to Luxor
-look briefly at Karnak and the Valley of the Kings
-take the minibus back to Hurghada, where we stayed in a hotel
-go snorkelling/scuba diving in the Red Sea
-go back to Safaga and our ship

So, we got a minibus, but he had to stop at a checkpoint for over an hour while they sorted out our papers. It transpired that he was not licensed to carry more than 14 passengers, and we had 18, so every time we passed a checkpoint we had to close the curtains. Although they got passport copies for 14 of us, nobody ever actually checked to see how many people were in the van.

Actually we were supposed to be 14, but somehow several random Japanese people had attached themselves to our group - probably nervous to make their way around by themselves with their non-existant English - and so the van was very cramped. Some people had to sit on the floor, another on someone's lap. And we were in that van for 5 hours! After we got to Karnak, some of us went elsewhere which eased the squeeze.

As seen from a car, Egypt is a land of satellite dishes, unfinished houses, and sand. Lots of sand.

Anyway I'm so tired I can't be bothered finishing my posts about Egypt. So I'll finish. I did have a few splendid moments, like seeing the sunset (before we were interrupted by a truck full of soldiers) and seeing all the stars come out, while listening to my music...

May 17

I've just come back from our day trip to the pyramids.

Yesterday we went up the Suez Canal, which took far less time than anticipated; originally our arrival time was predicted for 11pm, but we arrived at 5pm. During the day they opened up the topmost part of the bridge to passengers, so we could get a good view. They were selling shaved ice and snacks there. We also had some Egyptians come on board and set up a kind of mini market in the free space, where they were happily fleecing the innocent Japanese passengers. ^_^

Since we arrived early, we could go off the ship for dinner. I tell you, it's pretty weird to leave your room and go for a stroll in Egypt before going back home to bed...

We are at Port Said, which is at the northern end of the Suez Canal. It's a bit of a grotty town, with lots of stray cats, garbage, rather dirty shops, many without lighting inside. My roomie and I tried to copy the local habit of linking arms as we walked around - it's common among friends of the same gender - but had to give it up as we negotiated the narrow laneways, uneven pavings and constant weaving around curbs and gutters.

Customs consisted of walking through a hut past some utterly uninterested officers, then out the gate. Some locals set up a kind of souvenir market in the area directly outside the ship's gangway.

We found a place for dinner - I have eaten SO many yiros-type items now, I think I've had pita bread for about eight meals in the last week.

As mentioned, I went with my roommate, my companion of Jordan. As in Jordan, she was wearing her headscarf, and she greeted passersby cheerily in Arabic, but the responses were mixed; most people didn't really answer at all. I had the impression that the people in Egypt were a bit harder, somehow.

***

Today it was off to the pyramids, yay! It was my first time to be on one of the organised tours, and it was rather nice for a change. At a couple of ports I've felt a little wearied, trudging out into the hot weather to walk the haggle with taxi drivers, while all the Japanese passengers climb into the air-conditioned comfort of the waiting tour buses. Last port in Egypt, particularly - when they got taken straight to the tourist spots while we spent over an hour at a checkpoint getting approval to use the road.

The tour was pretty simple. Cairo is about three hours from Port Said, so we started super early - it was still dark - and went straight to the pyramids. We went to a couple of different vantage points, and the Sphinx, with just enough time to take a quick stroll and some pictures. For lunch we got taken to a restaurant on a boat on the Nile. Then we had a couple of hours free in Cairo, near the Egyptian museum. Most people went in there, but I went off by myself for a bit.

Cairo is full of irritating people. I was walking around muttering imprecations at everyone I passed. I don't mind the kind of merchant that shouts 'look! look! one dollar!' or 'come in! come in!' because I can keep walking. In Cairo they all had their own little strategies.

Like giving you something as a 'present' and then asking for a tip. No. If you want to try to sell it to me, fine, but don't leave me with a bad taste in my mouth, thinking I had experienced an act of kindness only to find it wasn't.

Or helping you cross the street (a daring feat in that part of the city), then striking up a conversation (where are you from? Oh, Australia? I have an uncle in Sydney. How many Egyptians have an uncle living in Sydney?!), which leads to 'let me give you my business card'. I don't mind getting their business card, but they wanted to take me into their shop to give it to me. Go away. I'm not going to buy anything.

Speaking of crossing the road, in theory there are a few pedestrian crossings, but most streets, even the huge ones, didn't have any. People just step out into traffic. By the end of an hour, I was quite adept at stepping out into six lanes of oncoming cars, buses and motorcycles.

Also, it was 42 degrees in Cairo today, so not altogether pleasant.

Our meeting point was a Hilton, and it was quite a contrast between outside - masses of locals waiting for buses, while people sold pita bread and grilled corn; lots of hole-in-the-wall supermarkets and sprawling vegetable stalls - and the inside.

I enjoyed seeing the pyramids, though we didn't have a very long time there. When I was 11, I remember going to see the pyramids, and feeling disappointed that they weren't as large as I'd expected. I don't know what I was expecting as a child, because as an adult, I was pretty impressed. Almost all the teachers are obsessive photo-takers - I am not alone - so most of our time at the pyramids was spent in a variety of poses. 'Holding' the pyramids, kissing the Sphinx, walking like an Egyptian, and making a human pyramid in front of the real deals.

May 18

Only a day after departing Egypt and the Middle East, and bam, the weather's turned cool. After a month of scorchers, I can say it's the first time I've been able to wear a jacket since we left Yokohama. The ocean - now we are in the Mediterranean - has been a wee bit rougher than we've been used to, and the ship has been rocking all day. A few people are sick, either from seasickness or from tummy upsets.

more updates

2010-05-26T06:36:00.000-07:00

im in spain right now with a keyboard that doesnt allow me to use any punctuation

May 19

We just got back from our port at Greece. We docked at Piraeus and took the train into Athens, and to the Acropolis, Parthenon, etc.

Jordan was the best experience, but Greece was the happiest, for me. It was relaxing. No overnight stay, no traversing half the country by bus, no schedules or time constraints - just an easy metro trip into the city and plenty of time to chill. We were lucky to be in the city on 'International Museums Day', which meant entrance to the Acropolis was free. ^_^

I spent some of the day with other people but mostly by myself. Actually it's one nice thing about going around the world with a huge group of people. Any famous places you visit, you usually run into lots of people you know. So there's lots of 'hello!'s and 'konnichiwa!'s throughout the day. It's kind of strange to be walking, say, around the ruins of Petra, and suddenly there's a student from your pre-int class. Or you're at the pyramids and run into the guy you see in the bar every day.

The best part of the day was walking up the slopes of the Acropolis hill, and passing ruins of theatres and temples, with pine trees and olive trees and the old rocks, and hills, and an amazing view over the city. And I had bought a baguette in Piraeus, and it was so good to sit on a rocky wall overlooking Athens, eating my sandwich. It sounds funny, but after a month of ship food, you'd appreciate fresh bread too. ^_^

It was also lovely just sitting with a coffee on the way to Syntagma, watching people go by. The nice thing about Athens was that it has one big attraction - the Acropolis - and once you've seen that, you don't feel like you have to dash about looking at other sites. And it's very easy to walk from the Acropolis down into the city streets.

I am so happy about the Greek food too. Actually I didn't end up having yiros or souvlaki, but that's okay. I had the Middle Eastern equivalent six or seven times in Jordan and Egypt. But for dinner we went to a restaurant in the Plaka with a view of the Acropolis, and had moussakas, and soutzoukaki (cumin-flavoured meatballs), and kebabs, and Greek salad, and garlic bread, and Greek red wine. Ohhhh. I don't even usually like Greek salad, or feta, or tomato, but this was so fresh and good, I loved it.

I felt it was nice to be in Europe. No bargaining or trying to negotiate taxis or whatever.

May 19

Every day we have a newspaper with the day's events. The translators say it's sometimes difficult to translate events that don't make sense even in Japanese.

Let me give you some example events from today. Some are normal, some are less so.

Let's Play Harmonica.

65 years of combating radioactivity (lecture)

Aloha Hula. Wanna Hula Dance with us? Please bring skirt or a big scarf.

Anyone who can't get over your ex! Come!

Time Lag. Celebrate the time difference with God who gained 2kg.

How to Propose: Third Session. Those who are addicted to falling love, come and watch!

Lovers of Surprises Get Together! Wanna surprise someone secretly? Let's plan out!

Ping Pong. Open to all passengers!

Calligraphy lesson. Please bring practice paper. We will hand out the example.

Walk the Talk. Young dreamers get together in the morning!

Delusional Woodwork Class Beginners.

I find this last one the most intriguing.

May 20

I wrote May 21, but my computer clock is still on Japan time. It's 2:02am tomorrow in Japan, but on the ship now it's 7:02pm. We're living in the past.

Today we went through the Messina Strait, which is between Sicily and the Italian mainland. We could see both Italy and Sicily clearly at the same time, on different sides of the boat. Just recently we've been going past Stromboli. Actually we've been going past it for a long time; I think we're doing circles to kill time. I think the scheduling on this boat was made allowing for a lot of delays, because actually we usually seem to arrive places early and then have to wait or do circles in order to move on.

I didn't talk much about the Suez Canal, but it was pretty cool. It was a day with no real scheduled events. The bridge kept sending out announcements like 'we are now entering the biggest lake of the Canal', 'we're reaching the middle point and passing the biggest city on the Canal', etc.

Today classes started again. It really felt like the first day of work after the holidays. But it was okay. I did another 'open' class, with about forty or fifty students.

On the pool deck the 'orizuru' (paper crane folding) project was making a giant paper crane - one that required about twenty people to hold it up. Then everyone wrote peace messages on it.

I did some more lesson prep, chatted to my students a bit, had a cappuccino in the bar, had a Japanese lesson.

For me, the best thing that happened today was that it rained. It smelled so good! I haven't seen rain since Singapore, and then only a few minutes.

Soon I am going to dinner. Someone I know incidentally has invited me to his table for dinner - it is his birthday - which is rather nice. ^_^

Tomorrow we'll arrive in Naples. Lots of stuff is happening in Europe. Various students are going on overland tours; new passengers are coming on board; new guest speakers are coming; exchange students are coming.

I'm feeling a bit tired at the moment.

May 23

Days after ports are usually free days, which means a bit of lesson planning, a bit of chilling out... I don't know where the day went, really. I got up late, sure... then what? I washed some clothes, went to lunch, sat around in the sun for a bit, went to a presentation one of the other teachers was doing, had afternoon tea, did lesson prep, went to the teacher's meeting, looked at my photos from Naples, did a bit more lesson-related stuff, and... I'm done.

Oh yeah, yesterday was Naples. I went to Sorrento and Ercolano (Herculaneum), and around Naples itself. Sorrento wasn't a bit like I remembered it. I went there in winter, and remembered it being a pretty, rather quiet seaside town, full of lemon trees and orange trees. This time there was hardly any fruit on the trees, and the place was packed with tourists, tourists everywhere.

When we got back to the ship we had a bit of a party on the back deck. Often departures happen really late at night, but this one was at 10, so the departure song played and we saw the port of Naples sliding away behind us. Some seagulls flew after our boat, and continued swooping and circling behind us in the darkness for at least 40 minutes after we left.

Updates from the Red Sea

2010-05-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

May 4 (Tue)

Yesterday was Constitution Memorial Day in Japan, so we had a lot of events related to Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. (This is the article that says Japan is pacifist and will not bear arms, will not fight in wars, etc. Apparently, Japan and Costa Rica are the only countries in the world to have such clauses in their constitutions.)

Right now everyone is in Sports Festival fervour. Everywhere you go, you can see people wearing ribbons the colour of their team. Some people are wearing costumes, holding up posters, etc. I can't read them... The teams are sorted according to month, and I am in the Blue team.

Our team name is 'Earth'. I find this very amusing, because Japanese people can't pronounce the 'ur' (they say 'ar') or 'th' (they say 's') sounds in 'Earth'. These sounds are not present in Japanese. This means that our team name sounds very much like the word 'arse'. I am in Team Arse. Go team, go.

Sports Day is in two days. I am participating in the 'tsunahiki' (tug-o-war). I think it is going to be scarily enthusiastic. You have not seen passion until you have seen Japanese team spirit. Hahaha.

I was having my daily coffee today - I always to go the bar on the 8th floor, where they play Norah Jones every day - and got invited to join the blue team for lunch downstairs. So there were lots of us having lunch downstairs. ^_^

Today I took videos of my two classes. The idea is that I will video them now, early in the course, and then near the end of the voyage, will play back their video, so they can see how they have improved. Hopefully they will have actually improved. Hahaha...

May 8 (Sat)

I'm writing this from the Red Sea. Days of the week are virtually meaningless on the boat. We follow our own time and space.

I've swum in several seas and oceans so far. The pool water on our ship comes from the ocean, so I've swum in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden. The recent waters have been very salty.

The weather's getting less stifling. Even though we are in the Middle East and it's very hot, it's a drier heat. More like Adelaide on a summer's day. The worst stretch, I think, was between Vietnam and Singapore. Maybe the first few days after Singapore too, when we were passing under India and Sri Lanka. Someone said we were getting the pre-monsoonal weather.

It seems to have been pleasant weather ever since we left Yokohama; although it has rained a couple of times, never when I've been outside.

I feel like I have a lot to update but not much time. We have come safely through the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden (as I mentioned, those areas are famous for pirates). But no problem.

May 9 (Sun)

Today is Sunday. There is actually a 'Bible reading' event on Sundays, in different languages, but I have had to teach both Sundays, so I haven't been able to attend.

Anyway: three things: 1) Undokai, 2) Fashion show, 3) Meeting my students.

1) Undo kai

The 'undou kai', or 'sports festival', is an important part of Japanese culture, especially in school days. From what I've heard, the format of our ship's undokai was a standard one, with most undokai following the same order of events. But I've never done a real Japanese-style sports festival before, so it was a great experience.

I've done Japanese-y things before, but it's always interesting to me to see how many cultural things are embedded in this country. Like there were a bunch of young people doing Japanese-style taiko (drumming), and pausing for dramatic effect with specific poses and shouts, wearing happi coats and hachimaki, taking turns, to the accompaniment of Japanese music... If we had a bunch of Australians doing drumming, we would just choreograph it randomly, without years of history to indicate how it could be done, but they were following all these traditional conventions.

The ship was divided into four teams, based on birth month. I was in the blue team, 'Earth' ('Arse', as I mentioned before ^_^). The four teams - blue, white, red and yellow - came wearing their team colours, and the very first 'event' was to count the number of participants. Our team came last, which I felt was a rather poor beginning.

The danchou (team captains) were four young, gung-ho guys who strongly resembled anime characters. What I mean to say is, you see anime characters and you think 'hahaha, that's so exaggerated'. But these people do exist in real life (or at least, when you put them up in front of an audience, they transform into caricatures ^_^). Our danchou had straggly blue and white hair; the red danchou had a kind of red punk-y pompadour.

They were really funny, leading their team cheers with bellowing voices. Each had dyed their hair the colour of their team. Apparently this cost them 30,000 yen each (!!!!!). It shows the lengths they will go to for their team...

The order of events was something like this:

Opening ceremony (included a dance, some taiko drumming, the intro of the danchou, Radio Taisou, and general announcements)

First events (kids events, a funny relay race, etc)

Lunch (this was a special VICTORY LUNCH - katsu and curry. Katsu is breaded pork; it's really yummy. In Japanese 'katsu', which means 'pork cutlet', sounds the same as 'katsu', which means 'win. So it's common to eat katsu before an exam, a sports festival, etc. Katsu curry, for the win! ^_^

Danchou competition, team cheers and 'Water Boys' (synchronised swimming)

Main events

Final results and closing ceremony

Compared with an Australian sports day, the emphasis was really on team sports, and there was a good mixture of old and young competing in each event.

Radio Taisou is a Japanese custom I had never heard of before. From the days before television, they would play music over the radio and people would do simple stretches and exercises to the music. We were all led in these stretches before the proper events happened. Then we all did a bit of a dance. ^_^

The funny relay was great. Basically, a person from each team would run around the pool deck, and have to complete a few challenges (like pulling a piece of candy out of a bowl of flour using their teeth, putting on a mask, etc) and run to a box which had papers in them. On the paper would be something like 'Someone named Suzuki' or 'An interpreter' or 'Someone with a red handbag'. The person would have to race to find someone in the audience meeting that criteria, and take them with them to the finish line. It was really funny, even though I couldn't read the papers. ^^;;

Some other events included group jump rope - about ten people had to jump at the same time, and only one team managed to get more than 1 jump, because there was always some older person jumping at the wrong time. ^^; But it was all fun. There was a three-legged race relay - had a couple of people come a cropper - and a centipede race, where several people, standing in a line, have their legs tied together and must move in unison. There was a game where people had to throw beanbags into a box (when I say that, I mean a big mass of people all throwing at the same time), and our team won. ^_^ I participated in the final event of all, the tug-of-war, which was like the grand finale and worth the highest number of points.

They sold kakigori (shaved ice; a common Japanese summer treat), and one of the events had the danchou (team captains) compete to eat bowls of kakigori, in their team colours, as quickly as they could. Terrible! They were all clutching their heads in pain... but our danchou won! Yay Blue. ^_^

It was a great day, under the blue Arabian sky. Kind of funny to be having such an intensely Japanese experience at the entrance to the Red Sea... I loved every minute. Lots of fun Japanese music played, and everyone was super genki.

Each team had also choreographed a team cheer, which was also for points. I think the Red team's was the best - so so super cute - while ours looked rather like they had come up with it in in about two minutes. However, Yellow won this section, probably because Yellow came last by a long way, so they wanted to give them some points. ^^;

White and Red dominated for most of the day, and for most of the day, Blue was coming third. When we came to the tug-of-war, we beat Red, while White beat Yellow. Then it was us verses White for the Big Finale. Chanting 'A-su, A-su' (Earth, Earth) and pulling on the 'su' sound, we got them over the line and won the tug-of-war! The high fives were many.

When the final points were tallied, and our danchou's ice-eating success, and our tug-of-war win were added, Team Earth came from behind to win the sports festival!!

It was very exciting. ^_^ We got to go to a 'winner's drinks' session afterwards, and there was a big party until early morning. (There are many, many late-night parties on this ship, most of which I don't attend, having early morning classes...)

2) Fashion show

You know that Japanese people like to shop, right? Well, so far we have been to China, Vietnam and Singapore. This means that quite a few ladies on the ship have bought aodai (Vietnamese traditional dresses), Singaporean batik dresses (like the Singapore Airlines uniform), Chinese dresses and sari. In addition, a number of people have kimono and yukata (Japanese summer kimono).

Therefore, they organised an Asian Fashion Show so that all the lovely ladies - and a few gentlemen - could show off their new purchases. We teachers were encouraged to participate, and I borrowed a yukata to wear (and found a random kind soul to put it on me ^_^).

There were four categories of clothing: Japanese, aodai, sari, and 'other' (Chinese dresses, Korean, etc). There was some cute choreography too, such as a young couple - who are going to get married on the ship - coming out in aodai together, and him carrying her off the stage. I was one of the first to go onto the catwalk and strike my poses, so I got to watch most of it.

3) My students

I mentioned that I have one class of all elderly people - the oldest is 88. So I have to take it slow for that class, but it's a really lovely class and I enjoy teaching it. Anyway, one of the students invited the class to try tea ceremony in his room (he has a balcony room - lucky ^_^). He had met a tea ceremony teacher during one of the ship tours, and she was there, wearing kimono, to teach us the procedure.

Although the other students are all over 60, several of them hadn't learned tea ceremony before. I couldn't understand very much but I enjoyed it. We couldn't sit on tatami mats, but otherwise we tried to follow the same procedure, each person taking a turn.

In tea ceremony, your movements and words are quite deliberate. Before taking the cup, you apologise to the next person for going before them (osaki ni); they reply 'go ahead' (douzo). You pick it up and hold it in one hand, carefully turning it with the other hand so that the picture on the cup faces you. The cups have seasonal pictures; for May, a kind of lily is suitable. Then you drink, trying to drain the dregs. Then you put it down carefully, gently lifting it to admire the picture on it. And you generally eat sweets before and after the tea, as the Japanese matcha (powdered tea) is rather bitter. I like it though.

Later that day I also met that same class for a drink in the on-board izakaya. I learned some new things about my students, for example, one of my septuagenarian students was a surgeon, and another was a 'hibakusha' (atomic bomb survivor) who helped remove bodies from Hiroshima after the bombing. It was difficult for us to communicate, but I wished I could understand more of their stories.

Sometimes it is easy with people, especially when they are beginners at English, to think of them purely in terms of students - 'oh, he can't understand very much', 'she can't speak very well', 'he gets confused'. You can forget that a person may be highly educated and articulate in their own language, since you hear them speaking in broken and basic English. It was a good reminder for me that my students are not only students.

...

There are so many events on this ship - and in such a short time - that we always have a lot to do, but mostly it's fun stuff. So for example, May 6 was Sports Day (no classes), then May 7 was the Fashion Show, then May 8 was 'All English and Spanish Day' (where students had to try to talk to as many people in English or Spanish as possible) and there was an auction with proceeds to support refugees, and there was a book sale, with books going to a refugee camp.

Tonight - May 9 - we are having 'Arabian Night', and tomorrow we will be in Egypt. We teachers are planning to go into Luxor for the first day, and then go snorkelling in the Red Sea for the second. I think we will be very tired, but it's gonna be great. ^_^

We've been at sea for about 13 days with no land, but it hasn't been a problem. I haven't even really thought about it. The boat becomes your world. ^_^

Today was a quiet day. It was the last day of our first 'term' of teaching, so we have quite a few days off. The next week will consist of ports: Safaga, Safaga (Egypt), Aqaba, Aqaba (Jordan), up the Suez Canal, and then Egypt again (Port Said). So no classes for a little while.

Today I spent some time up at the pool, and I just went to our port orientation. Before each port, or each series of ports, we have a boatwide orientation session - translated into English over the little handheld radios (simultaneous broadcast devices) - where we hear about the ocean route we've just travelled, where we're about to travel, and some important cultural information about the countries coming up.

Ship life

2010-04-29T08:14:00.001-07:00

Being on a ship

When the sea is calm, the ship sails smoothly, and when you are downstairs you'd hardly know that you were on a ship at all. So far, it's been like this about 80% of the time.

When the sea is rougher - even little, choppy waves will do it - the ship rolls from side to side, left to right...

At the moment it's such that if you walk port or starboard (left or right) on the ship, you have the impression of either running downhill, or of trying to walk uphill, depending on the ship's angle at that particular second.

You have to guard glasses so they don't slide off the table. Coins or small objects might fall off the couch onto the floor. Curtains hang at an angle. Look at the wine glasses and see the level of the wine changing with each roll of the ship. And waiters never fill your glass anywhere near the top.

Time travel

We are constantly travelling through time. Every few days we get another hour, and as we are generally travelling west, we will have (I think) 23 days of 25 hours. When we cross the international dateline, we will have one day of 1 hour. That is, when the clock ticks over to midnight, it will become 11pm of the next day.

So far we have changed the clocks four times. At the moment we're travelling kind of southwest. The sunset time has changed quite a bit.

It's lovely now that we've started teaching classes, because we get up quite early, but we are having two days in a row of an extra hours' sleep. ^_^

Ports

So far we have been to three ports - Xiamen, China, Da Nang, Vietnam, and Singapore. It is a strange thing to carry your home around the world with you. You wake up in the morning, have a shower, get dressed, grab your handbag, go outside and - bam! - you're in a new country that wasn't there the night before.

Each port was good fun in its own way, and we went around in groups of teachers; forming bigger and smaller groups throughout the day, as we happened to meet up. It's nice to go with a group as you can get cheap taxi rides etc, but nice not to be in a huge group when it comes to making group decisions on restaurants etc.

Food

I can't say I'm a big fan of the ship fare. Lunch is probably the best meal of the day, since it's a buffet and there's usually a couple of good dishes, and not all Japanese food. Dinners are kind of B-grade Japanese 'washoku', lots of little dishes of tofu and pickles and rice and such things.

One thing we all do in port is stock up on goodies. I was happy to find BBQ Shapes in a supermarket in Singapore. What more do you need? ^_^

Arrr

We're travelling through pirate-y waters. We've just come through the Strait of Malacca. No problems. Later we will be going near Somalia, through the Gulf of Aden, and at that time we will have some extra safety precautions. We get to sail up the Red Sea! Very cool.

So far we have passed through the South China Sea, the Strait of Malacca... we saw parts of Sumatra yesterday, and I think we passed part of Sri Lanka today. I don't always know what I'm seeing, but you do see the odd glimpse of land...

Sometimes you can see little markers in the ocean, which I think mark the shipping route. I never thought of there being a marked shipping route before. We have seen a number of other boats over the last two weeks.

Events

There've been various events on the ship. I'll give you some examples:
-every day there are random 'fun' events like dancing workshops, percussion workshops, Wii gamefests, painting, shamisen, etc
-there are lectures by guest experts about topics related to the theme of our journey, like the Palestine issue, nuclear weapons, etc
-there are language program events, like parties and festivals that we will organise

Last night there was a full moon party, which I didn't attend, but oh! The full moon was absolutely stunning over the water. It shone for miles, and formed a kind of rainbow in the clouds surrounding it. And in the distance we could see lightning making the clouds golden.

Yesterday, since we just left Singapore, we had a big tropical fruit party. There were commonplace ones like mango and pineapple, as well as more unusual ones like dragonfruit, rose apple and durian (which I don't recommend ^_^). I had the good fortune to volunteer for it, and apart from its being very hot outside, it was an easy stint and resulted in some free fruit. ^_^

Highlights

There's a lot going on all the time, so what are some of my highlights so far?

Riding on the back of a bicycle around city streets in Vietnam

Standing and staring out at the night sky with the full moon over the water

Eating awesome Indian food in Singapore

My first classes - nice groups of people ^_^

Scarfing down some free tropical fruit at the fruit party

Sitting in the jacuzzi on the back of the ship, watching the ocean.

Getting a dress made in Vietnam

Competing in the international Mario Kart championships ^_^

The nice thing about working with nice people is that work doesn't completely feel like work. Yes it will get busier and busier - we're still just starting - but when you have meetings and stuff, it's not a chore.

Big update from the ocean

2010-04-24T01:58:00.000-07:00

Hey all! Here's my diary from the ship so far. Probably the longer we sail, the less time I will have to write, but for now...

April 16

Today was shukkou no hi - departure day! We've just set sail.

I am sharing a room with two other girls. Later in the journey, there will be four of us. Needless to say, we have already filled the room to capacity with all our stuff! Actually, the cabin is not that small - I've certainly lived in smaller spaces in Japan - and there is just enough storage space for us to keep most of our things without too much hassle. We do not have a window, and right now a couple of the lights don't work, so it is a little dark, but this should get fixed soon.

Our first job on the ship was to greet customers coming in, help them find their rooms and answer any questions (the blind leading the blind!). I used a lot of Japanese (poorly). We had our first buffet lunch.

The ship departure was at 3, so just before that we all gathered for the 'shukkou shiki' (departure ceremony). We staff passed out drinks for a group kampai, and outside on Osambashi pier, heaps of family and friends braved the cold and rain to send off loved ones. From the deck were screams of 'itte rrasshai!' and from us, 'itte kimasu!'

(This is a kind of standard Japanese 'aisatsu', or greeting. Both of them mean, like, 'see you'.
'Itte kimasu' is used when someone is leaving, like ducking out the office, or leaving the house in the morning. It could be translated as 'I'm off!' or 'I'm going and coming back later!'
'Itte rasshai' is said by the person who stays behind.)

Later, we had a party and dinner.

The party was on the pool deck. Unfortunately, today was really cold - maximum 8, and in the evening it would have been more like 5 or 6 - so it wasn't ideal for formal clothes. I was sooo cold, especially passing out the ice-filled juices, and champagne! When people started dancing, that was much better. But it was very un-spring-like weather, about the coldest departure they've had.

Some observations:

I think I will definitely lose weight on this ship!

The food is quite decent (so far; I heard some of the fresh ingredients are a bit thin on the ground the longer we are at sea. And that's a nice mixed metaphor for you!). But it's fairly healthy food, and there are a LOT of stairs on this ship! They do have elevators but they are small and slow, and this ship has 11 floors.

The bottom 3 floors are, I guess, for storage and crew and so on. The fourth floor is where some of the other teachers and staff have their cabins. The fifth floor is where reception is, as well as the gangway. The sixth floor has a big restaurant. My cabin is on this floor too.

Also, I will be stressed or busy a lot, which will keep my appetite down, I think, not to mention seasickness...

Seasickness! Now that we are properly out in the open sea, the ship does roll from side to side. At times it's worse than others. I was fine at first - walking was a bit strange, like you are a bit drunk or something; you don't go in quite the exact direction you were aiming for.

After I sat down for dinner though, I started to feel a bit queasy and couldn't eat everything. I know it is good to eat when you are seasick; it's when your stomach is totally empty that you feel worst. So I managed to eat a bit. One bad thing was that I was with a group of Japanese people (we were supposed to distribute ourselves among the Japanese passengers who were travelling alone, so we could help make small talk and get to know people). And for half the meal I couldn't feel very lively.

I feel somewhat better now though. It is easier when you are up and moving around. Sitting down reading or (as now) looking at a computer screen is not the best...

I am not the only one though; another teacher was feeling worse than me, and I saw a few people going to get seasickness pills from the reception desk. I picked one up for good measure but haven't needed to take it yet.

Being on a ship... there are various small details that are interesting when you first notice them. For example, I had some coins on the couch, but when the ship rolled, the coins fell onto the floor. Good incentive to be tidy! At dinner you could see the level of the wine in the glasses tilt with the movement of the ship. Doors also tend to shut themselves, given time.

April 19 (Mon)

Where did the time go? Oh yeah, I was in the infirmary with a drip in my arm!

So, after my post on Friday, on Saturday I got my first proper brush with seasickness. Apparently it's particularly common in the seas around Japan, because the water is rather choppy. Though it doesn't look terribly rough, the choppy waves make the ship roll from side to side.

I wasn't the only one affected; quite a few of the teacher were looking a bit green in the teacher's meeting.

I tried various strategies:
-try to eat something - and then I threw up
-take a seasickness pill - and then I threw up
-go outside - I did so - and then on my way back inside, I threw up
-look out the window - I did so - and then had to run out twice to throw up

This was also during our fire drill, where we all had to assemble on the deck. The ocean was quite beautiful - there were rainbows periodically dancing over the waves, an effect I've never seen before - but I did have to leave more than once. I wasn't the only one, though - several people were also vomiting in there, and there was a steady stream of people through Reception getting sickness pills.

Later that day I felt better, enough to go and eat dinner, and even have a drink at the bar afterwards. It was one of the teachers' birthdays, so he got 'happy birthday' sung to him about a dozen times throughout the day.

Then I went to bed, and woke up in the middle of the night to throw up, and didn't stop for the next several hours. I think I threw up at least 13 or 14 times. After the first two times I decided not to sleep on my top bunk any more, but moved to the couch underneath, since I had to keep getting up.

Come morning time, I couldn't get up; my roommate fetched the teacher coordinator and brought me drinks, and then organised to take me to the infirmary. The infirmary had the merit of having windows - natural light! - and being a bit cooler than my own room. The doctor had me lie down and put a drip in my arm for a couple of hours.

You have to be careful looking through portholes if you are feeling sick. If you look up through one, you can only see the sky, but if you see the reflection of the porthole on the ceiling, you can see the ocean racing past, and it can make you feel dizzy.

After having the drip, I staggered back to my own room and slept for about 24 hours.

I don't think this was seasickness, as the ocean had really calmed down, and the reaction was disproportionately strong. Probably food poisoning or something.

I missed several meetings and events, including our team presentation (when we were supposed to introduce ourselves to the ship by doing a kind of performance). I am kind of relieved I didn't have to dance, but I couldn't even sit up for more than ten seconds, let alone practise dancing for an hour...

Now I am feeling a bit more human, though still not perfect.

Today was a 25-hour day, as we set our watches back an hour.

April 20

We are at Xiamen, but we cannot dock yet because the weather is foggy. Some of the scheduled tours have been cancelled. I don't mind too much because Xiamen isn't one of the ports I was most looking forward to anyway - I don't know much about it, to be honest, and we should still have a few good hours to poke around the city, have something to eat, etc.

Every day before arriving in a new port, we have a kind of staff 'port orientation' where one teacher tells the others about things to do in that port. I'm gonna do one for Piraeus, Greece.

Yesterday the sun set during our teacher's meeting, so we all took a five minute break during the meeting to go out on the deck and watch the sun set.

I have never sailed on the open sea before. One thing that surprised me is how calm it is. Of course, not all stretches are alike - the sea leaving Japan was quite choppy, and apparently the Atlantic can get quite rough - but mostly it has been quite still and quiet. I imagined the open sea to have a lot of waves. Most people have recovered from their seasickness as the ship isn't swaying so much.

I haven't seen any dolphins or animals yet - only a couple of swallows during the sunset last night, which seemed to me to be very far from land. We could see the shipping trail marked by buoys, and have seen the occasional other ship in the distance.

On our first day we stayed wholly in Japanese waters; I think we left Japanese waters early on the morning of the 18th, or at least they said we passed Kagoshima around midnight. After Xiamen we shall cross the South China Sea to Da Nang, Vietnam.

What else should I write about? Maybe the food. We have three set mealtimes during the day. I have attended mealtimes sporadically but I will summarise them:

Breakfast - too early. There are two restaurants open for breakfast; one has more Japanese food, one more Western-style. The food isn't all that fresh - the bread is like airplane bread, for example - but each day there is some kind of fresh fruit, a kind of salad, then pancakes, French toast, cereal, rice, natto... it depends which restaurant; it's a buffet. You can also get free tea or coffee. If you want juice or other drinks you can buy them.

It's nice to have breakfast upstairs, not only because it's more Western-style, but because you can eat outside in the light and fresh air of the pool deck.

Lunch - actually, I've only had lunch once, on my first day! I kept feeling too sick, and ordering to my room a kind of special rice porridge for invalids. ^^; Lunch is also a buffet.

Dinner - dinner is served in the big restaurant. Because there are a lot of passengers, this is served in two sessions - early and late. We teachers are always the late sitting. It can feel like a long time between lunch and dinner.

Dinner comes as a series of small dishes, and it's very Japanese-style. So far I can say there is usually pickles, tofu, a rice dish with flavourings like bento rice, broiled fish (which I have avoided ever since my tummy bug), a dessert, etc. There's also an 'extra' dish you can order if you like. I have to say I am not a big fan of the dinners so far and most of them have left me feeling queasy. I might start to eat 2-minute noodles in my room...

What else... because we are sitting around waiting to land at port, I have more time on my hands and I should get some of the initial 'about the boat' stuff out of the way...

The ship has 11 floors, though passengers cannot go on the topmost or bottom three floors. There is a big 'free space' area, a pool deck which also has tables for eating, and a few bars and restaurants. Lots of other rooms for events, seminars, meetings, classes, etc...

As I think I mentioned before, about half the passengers on this ship are over 60, but there's a big group of young people as well - like early 20s. We even have a few children, and a big children's play area. Actually, we have been told not to smile cheerily and wave in the little kids' faces, as you often do with babies, because they were getting a bit overwhelmed and distraught with all the attention from 800+ passengers on board, ha ha ha...

We have not started teaching yet, but we will soon be doing interviews to place students in levels. I already met a couple of my interviewees by chance. Since I have been sick and spent most of my time in my cabin, I haven't met so many new people yet, but I hope I can do this more as we continue.

When we left port in Yokohama, it was quite cold and rainy, but now it's getting warmer and we are in a near-tropical environment. Since it's misty today, though, it's not that warm today.

April 20 (2)

We finally got in to Xiamen. We were able to disembark around 3pm, where we had originally imagined about 9am. However, they pushed forward our departure time so we could stay later in the evening. That gave them time to still carry out most of the tours they had planned for that port.

We teachers went into small groups and took taxis to Nanputuo Temple. There were a lot of Chinese tourists there. We went around the temple and then some of us went onto the nearby university grounds. The security guards on the gate looked at us a bit askance but a random student came and translated for them. Somehow we managed to convince them we were not terrorists, and on we went.

The university grounds were really nice. We walked around the lake and there were some uni students breakdancing. A few small children decided to get in on the act, and they were going off. Really really cute.

We took a bus - 1 yuan! - back to the city, and went to Zhongshan Lu, the main shopping strip. The bit we went to had a bunch of food stalls. We did a little window shopping and for dinner got these veggie soup things from stalls. There's like 20 different types of vegetables, 10 types of meat and a few different types of noodles, and you can choose what you want put in your soup bowl, for about $1-2.

I had nothing but vegetables - glorious fresh vegetables of many different varieties - and it had a slight spiciness to it, and it was very nice and exactly what I felt I needed. ^_^

It was really quite surreal to go into port for just one day. On one hand, it felt like I'd never been off land - just felt natural to be out and about again. On the other hand, it felt weird to suddenly be - boom! in China. It was actually quite easy getting off the ship and through immigration, so that suddenly we were walking out into a new country, carrying only our handbags or whatever. So cavalier was I about leaving the ship that I even forgot my money. ^^; Fortunately I spent less than $20 anyway.

There was some very slight residual 'swaying' as we readjusted to being on shore, but that was about it.

April 22 (Thur)

I am already starting to forget the days of the week. Yesterday we interviewed a bunch of students. I got a cold, probably from staying in my hot stuffy room for so many hours. Constant succession of illnesses. But now I'm okay again.

I'll tell you about my day today. It's not exactly a typical day - not much work, and still haven't started teaching classes yet - but it might give you some idea of the ship.

Last night we gained another hour so I stayed up a little later than usual. I got up late, missing breakfast, and went up to the pool deck. It was sunny and really humid - so different from a week ago! - so I went for a quick swim. The pool deck also has all the outdoor tables and chairs for the restaurant, so after swimming I could get my lunch and sit out to eat it. Some of the other teachers came and went while I was there so I kind of ate with half of them.

The lunch buffet today consisted of:
-the usual salad - cabbage, lettuce, tomato, etc
-potato salad
-some other weird seaweedy salad
-the usual watery soup, today's with tofu and a slightly spicy flavour
-chicken teriyaki
-baked cheese-covered vegetables
-spaghetti with cod roe
-broccoli and shrimp
-bread/rice
-tea/coffee

After lunch we had a couple of meetings to plan events and look through the resources in the classrooms, etc.

Our last meeting finished a bit early so I snuck into the tail end of an Okinawan shamisen lesson that was happening in the kids' room. Lots of elderly Japanese people learning to play, and doing Okinawan dancing. They tried to teach me the dancing but I was a bit of a spaz.

All over the ship are different 'event spaces' that can be used for all kinds of random events. Any person on the ship can hold their own event. As teachers, our schedules conflict with most of them, but we can still attend a few.

Then we had our port orientation for Vietnam, where we'll arrive tomorrow, while the sun set outside our window again. (The sun set about half an hour earlier than two days ago, I feel...)

After the port orientation I went into the free space area and there was the end of a Mario Cart session (people were playing Wii Mario Cart on the big screen). Me and E, a fellow teacher from England sat hopefully in the audience hoping we'd be allowed to play, and sure enough, the commentator saw us and invited us to play in the final round. (There are advantages to being the only foreigners sometimes. ^_^)

It was pretty funny because the organiser of this 'event' had a microphone and was commentating like it was a real race. Once me and E joined, it became an 'INTERNATIONAL RACE' and the competitors were from Japan, England, and Australia, world championships. Ha ha ha... (For the record, I came second out of four. ^_^)

After that me and E migrated to the nearby go tables. 'Go' is a Japanese game using black and white counters on a board. These go tables are usually occupied solely by old Japanese men. E knew a simple version of go, where you have to try to get five of one colour in a row. It's like a fancy version of tic-tac-toe. While we played, a couple of old Japanese men watched us intently. I felt the pressure. ^_^

We went to dinner. Man, I don't really like the dinners on this boat. They're just... very Japanese. And they all feel a bit the same. Tonight's meal was:
-bok choy
-grated yam (I love sitting next to our Spanish teacher; every time she tries some unfamiliar Japanese food she makes very expressive faces of disgust)
-rice
-seaweed soup
-stirfried pork with ginger, burdock salad
-optional 'noodle with a lot of ingredient' (for the record, there were not *that* many ingredients. We were kind of disappointed, ha ha ha)
-custard cake for dessert

After dinner I did a couple of things for work, then came back here. I have my own classroom now. I put up a few photos and a map in it. I made a little boat picture for the map, which I'll move as we travel. We don't get much news about the outside world, but there is a map each day we can check to see where we are.

The nice thing about being on this boat with all the other teachers is that you have ready-made companions for meals, trips to port, etc. I've had a few meals chatting to Japanese people and other guests too, but it's nice to have a core group; already we have lots of things to talk about

Tomorrow we arrive in Vietnam pretty early so I'll try get an early night. Goodnight!

April 23 (Fri)

It's rather windy outside, and so the ship is rolling again, stronger than ever. The last few days we had calm seas, so that often you were not even particularly aware you were on a boat. At the moment it's such that if you walk port or starboard (left or right) on the ship, you have the impression of either running downhill, or of trying to walk uphill, depending on the ship's angle at that particular second. It is stronger rolling than last time. I think I took my preventative seasickness pill in time this time, so so far, so good.

Our clothes hangers are swaying back and forth, and there's a risk of glasses sliding off tables.

Anyway... we went to Vietnam today! It was good fun. Eleven of us shared a van to Hoi An, a kind of touristy town that reminded me rather of Bali. One thing that struck me about this town compared with Japan is - in Vietnam heaps of people spoke to us, asked us questions, called out greetings - because without exception they all wanted to sell us something. In Japan, people are much more reserved and very few people will try to talk to you, but people are really interested in knowing about you.

Hoi An is known for its tailoring shops, and so most of us girls got at least one dress tailored for us. They did them fast too - only 3 hours and we came back to fetch them. I got a dress, a top and some pants made for me.

Vietnam was a bit more expensive than I thought - ie, I spent more money than expected - probably because I wasn't very good at bargaining. None of my usual techniques (start low, gradually concede; argue; walk away and wait for them to stop you) seemed to work.

Another highlight, apart from the clothes, was one of the teachers, G, hired a bicycle for the day. He had a conical Vietnamese hat on when we met him by chance, and he gave me a ride around town on the back of his bike, zipping around motorcycles, hitching rides from rickshaw drivers, chucking U-ys with ease.

We had the same experience in Xiamen, where we were walking around a famous spot and came across a big Japanese tour group from our boat. But it's so much nicer to get around by yourself.

Actually, I found out today that both the tours I thought I had signed up for, actually were fully booked and I am not on them. Now I don't mind much because I do like going around freely with the other teachers and having fun. But I do have some tour 'credit' I can use, ie go on a tour for free. So I ought to 'spend' some of it if there's a good opportunity.

Double hanami

2010-04-05T05:39:00.000-07:00

I've taken a lot of photos of cherry blossoms this past week. The weather's been cold, which has been good because it's kept the trees in bloom for a little longer.

On the weekend I had two hanami. Hanami 花見, which means 'flower viewing', are parties where groups of people gather under cherry blossoms in parks, bring lots of food and drinks, and have a picnic ~~in the freezing cold~~ in the beautiful fresh spring weather. The fact that it is legal to drink alcohol in many public places in Japan enhances the jovial atmosphere, and on the weekend, every good 'cherry blossom' spot is a sea of tarps and friends.

Hanami are all the more special because cherry blossoms have such a short life. The trees are usually at their peak for only a week or so, though they may bear flowers for up to three weeks or so. As luck had it, they were at their best late last week, so the revellers were out in full force.

As I mentioned, I had two hanami on the weekend.

The first was with just three friends. The weather was cool but sunny and really nice. There were lots of other people nearby. One of our group arrived there three hours before the party to hold a good spot for us, near the weeping cherry tree.

After that party, we went out for drinks and snacks at an izakaya, followed by (my favourite thing ever) karaoke. ^_^ I discovered that if you sing Hirai Ken's 'Pop Star', people will do all the actions along with the music video. Ha ha ha...

On Sunday we had a mammoth hanami. A couple of our group got to the park at 6am (!! It was like 2 degrees!!) to get us a good spot. Apparently when they arrived, there were some drunk teenagers who had been there all night and were still wreaking havoc, at least until 7am or so, when they got arrested by the police. ^^;;

The Sunday hanami was kind of organised by some of the group I used to meet up with every week or two, but lots of other people came; there were over 20 of us, including some of my old co-workers and lots of my ex-students from various classes. The weather was much less pleasant for this one, though it didn't actually rain hard, I guess, while we were sitting out in the elements. Ha ha ha...

Back

2010-03-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

'In Kawasaki' is back on, because I am back in Kawasaki.

Flights over went about as smoothly as could be hoped. Due to some stuff-ups with my first flight, after a lot of waiting in lines, I got put in Business Class. This was very nice, and my first time to try one of those airbeds, where the seat reclines almost flat. The massage feature was a nice touch too. :)

Woken as usual at 4:30am for breakfast, which is of course exactly what you feel like after approximately half an hour of half-sleep.

Didn't feel much as I arrived - it's hard to muster up much excitement at 6:30am when you're waiting in line for Customs - but once I arrived in Nippori to change trains, I started to feel like I was properly in Japan again. But it's so cold here! It was 4 degrees when I arrived, and quite bitingly cold.

Where am I now? Well, I can't check into my hotel until 4, so I came to an Internet cafe in Kawasaki. Six hours for 1200 yen ($15). I'm in a little, soundproof room with a spongy floor to sleep on.

Now I'm annoyed at myself for having never tried this before! I'd heard of it - Internet cafes that have spaces to sleep; on site they also have washing machines, showers, etc. It's a common thing for people who've missed their last train to kip at one of these for the night. It's also becoming more common for homeless people to stay in these places for the night, as it may be the only accommodation they can afford.

But I didn't realise they were actual rooms; I thought you just slept in the reclining chair in a little cubicle (my previous experience of Internet cafes here).

(Incidentally, I forgot how annoying it is that the Japanese space bar is about 1.5cm long, and right next to the button that changes your character input to じゃぱねせ sorry, Japanese characters. Ha ha ha...)

Anyway, I'm going out soon, to have some fun. :)

Random updates

2009-10-01T06:33:00.000-07:00

I've been having a fun and busy month since my farewell party. I had a 'fireworks party', a day trip to Kannonzaki (down the Miura peninsula), a trip to Disney Land, a 'video games party' (everything is a party in Japan ^_^), a singles party, and a looot of food. I've worn kimono, tried calligraphy, sang karaoke, and lit fireworks.

Just looking at my diary now, I see that from September 9 until now (October 1), I've met up with people for drinks or parties or coffee, 26 times. 26!! I've met up with 34 different students, 8 different staff members, 2 friends, and met a whole bunch of new people too.

It's been rather sad saying so many final 'goodbyes', but the more I do it, the more I feel ready to leave. I often find that after I do something, my feeling is different than before I do it. For example, before I announced to students I was going to leave, I felt really sentimental, like I hated to leave. After I announced it, I felt less emotional about it; it felt more like 'oh well, this is what's going to happen'. Before - and while - I was saying my last goodbyes, I felt sad. But now, I've been saying so many, I'm not feeling as badly over each one.

Today was a good day. I met my co-worker for breakfast, met two students for coffee, and another student for dinner. That student has just done a 7-week homestay in Japan. His English improved greatly. I felt very proud of him. ^_^

I did a fair bit of Japanese study until this week. I did three weeks of Kumon and completed about 30 worksheet sets; about 20 hours of study in total. I also took several private lessons with my old teacher, and started on a new textbook studying JLPT 2-kyuu grammar. It's quite tough.

Also, I was mooching around Kawasaki as usual, and went to LaZona - the department store near my house - and the Backstreet Boys were there! There were sooo many people. They gave a free show - 4 songs - to promote their new CD. That's pretty cool!

Tomorrow will be my big 'Moving Day'. Not very much looking forward to that. Naturally I have, over the last week and a half, been cleaning and disposing of stuff, sending packages back, etc. Last night I gave a lot of my cooking ingredients and tea and coffee to random people in the guesthouse.*

Today I took some books to Book-Off (I bought them for over 10,000 yen, and sold them for 320 yen... hahaha... I would have been annoyed, if I weren't planning to just throw them away anyway). Tomorrow I'll take my printer to the school to give one of my co-workers who wants it. I have to transfer money to my Australian bank account, cancel my phone, wash clothes, take a final package to the post office, clean out my room, etc.

*(Actually, I had only met one of the people in the guesthouse - just saying a brief 'konnichiwa' to others I saw in the hall or kitchen - until last night. There were four of them sitting around finishing dinner, watching TV, chatting. First time I actually saw people socialising in the guesthouse. One of them offered me a snack from Hong Kong, so I got out my bottle of umeshu and offered it around. I needed to use it up anyway. I ended up staying down there for about an hour; three of them didn't speak any English at all, so it was good Japanese practice. ^_^)

I am a bit disgruntled now, because when I came back to my guesthouse, I found that the large communal garbage bin - which until today was full to bursting - was empty, and taped up, with a big sign on it saying 'Do not use'. So... what am I supposed to do now? Where are the 20 or so people in this building supposed to put their garbage? There is no information to that effect.

I am moving house tomorrow. Nice timing!! Couldn't you have waited one more day to disable use of our garbage bin? I am going to have a lot of stuff to chuck!

I shall leave Japan on Saturday morning, and go to Singapore. I'm going to Langkawi for a few days and then will return to Adelaide on Friday morning. Ja ne!!

Going back

2009-09-19T07:47:00.001-07:00

Just letting you know I've booked my flights back to Australia and will be arriving on October 9th.

My guesthouse

2009-09-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

I'm staying at a guesthouse now. There are about 20 girls here, mostly Japanese.

I've been here a few days. I can't say I like it overly. The worst, for me, is the bathroom, or lack thereof. The toilets are Japanese-style (eg, a hole in the ground) and not very clean. There's no soap or hand towel in the bathroom. There is no mirror. It feels dirty. The only full-length mirror is on the ground floor. I am on the third floor.

It may be good for exercise; if you want to make a cup of tea or use a Western-style toilet or iron clothes or see your reflection, you have to go down to the ground floor. If you want to wash or hang clothes, you have to go up to the rooftop.

Everything in the house is written in Japanese, and there was no explanation of rules, nobody to take me around the house and show me around. So I am figuring things out bit by bit. (At the time of writing, I just put a load of dirty laundry - with washing powder and all!! - in the dryer. !!! I didn't realise what I'd done until I'd (wasted) my 100 yen coin, and the clothes started flying around and sending powder everywhere...)

On the other hand, the location is extremely convenient and I am meeting up with a lot of people.

(By the way, my farewell party was good. Today I counted the number of presents I had gotten. I have received presents from 37 different people. 37!!!)

Done!

2009-09-03T03:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my last day of work. I was imparting a lot of information to the new teacher, and didn't actually have all that many classes myself, so it felt a bit atypical. I gave Tim Tams to every student for the last week.

A couple of former students - a mother and daughter - took me out to dinner after school, which was nice. They invited me to do a lot of things with them, and they gave me - I can't quite believe this - a real pearl necklace. !!! A real pearl necklace!! These are the same people who gave me souvenirs to take back to my family in Australia, and who invited me to see the daughter playing in an orchestra.

But a lot of students have been wonderfully generous, and I've been flooded with presents. Mostly, the students I've taught a long time, or whom I've developed a good relationship with, were the ones to give me things. So I am touched.

Here in my hotel room is a vase with a huge bouquet of pink and dusky purple roses; it must have cost over $50. The student who gave it to me is a guy I've taught for quite a while; he was fairly reserved and shy for a long time and only in the last few months have we begun to develop a good rapport. ^_^ One 6-year-old child made me a bracelet and drew a picture of my class. I got a picture from one of my 2-year-olds, too.

One lady, who previously gave me some of her homemade yuzu-shu and cherry-shu (liqueur), gave me a big bottle of homemade umeshu. Umeshu is plum liqueur - my favourite drink - and she said this bottle had been maturing for six years, so it would have a really good taste.

I'm having a farewell party on Saturday, and really looking forward to that. I love a good party. About 60 people are coming. ^_^

***

Right now I'm still staying in a hotel, but tomorrow I will move into my guesthouse. It's only a few blocks from here, so I'll spend a couple of hours tomorrow ferrying my stuff back and forth from my school and hotel to my guesthouse.

Today I joined Kumon. The approach is to basically do lots of worksheets and lots of reading and writing in Japanese. I am not very fast at them, though they are fairly simple for me in terms of grammar. For example, my communicative and listening ability is quite a lot higher than my reading, which is slow (and I can't read many kanji confidently). As for my Japanese writing, well...

The thing is, when I have studied Japanese previously, I have focused mostly on learning new grammar and communicating with it. Therefore, I've always taken notes in romaji (eg, writing Japanese words using English letters). I've done some textbook work in which I have written a fair bit of hiragana; therefore my hiragana is not too slow. But writing kanji and katakana is not very fast for me.

Also, knowing how to say something in Japanese doesn't mean I can always write it totally accurately. For example, 'hello' is 'konnichiwa'. But in Japanese characters, it's written こんにちは (konnichiha), as the 'ha' character is often written as 'wa' in romaji. Another example is that I know to pronounce 'coffee' as 'kohi', but when I actually write it in Japanese, I have to pause - are both sounds 'long' (eg コーヒー) or only one sound long (eg コーヒ or コヒー). I can often guess or remember it right, but when I've never or rarely written it before, I do need to think about it, or check somewhere. Hence, I am slow.

So I think this Kumon approach is just what I need - very concentrated practice reading and writing. I'm also going to have a few private lessons with my original Japanese teacher.

Where I am now

2009-08-29T19:42:00.000-07:00

Phew... I'm rather glad this week is over. Basically, I've moved the entire contents of an apartment by hand. Because I'm too cheap to use a transportation company, or even a taxi, every day I've been hauling huge loads of bags via the trains, lurching clumsily through every ticket gate, and leaving my stuff at my office.

This morning is the first morning I've neither had to move, nor work. I have a whole glorious day to do nothing. Right now I'm staying at a hotel, and I shall presently go down for a free lunch buffet. ^_^

It really is remarkable how much stuff one can accumulate in just over a year and a half. I sent a package of stuff back to Australia; I threw out about ten huge garbage bags of stuff, and I still had about 20 bags, and a very swollen suitcase, to bring.

Anyway, it's all done now. I expect to move into my guesthouse in a few days. Happily, it's only a few minutes' walk from my school and hotel, and I chose to move in one day before I have to check out of this hotel, so I can do quite a leisurely to-and-fro of bringing my bags in. My room is going to be really small - I mean, considerably smaller than the fairly small apartment I just left. So long as I can physically fit my suitcase in there, I guess it will be okay. I've never stayed at a guesthouse before. Hopefully it will have a nice atmosphere. I haven't even seen it, but I've signed up for one month.

Last night after work I went out for Nepalese curry with some students. After that, we went out to karaoke. We did three hours of karaoke, and I sang at least a dozen songs, and it was the first time I didn't sing *any* English songs. ^_^ Actually I think it may have been the first time I was the only foreigner among Japanese people. It was nice to be able to finish at about 3am, and just walk back to my hotel, without having to feel 'trapped' by my lack of train.

Tomorrow I and another teacher have been invited to lunch at the house of one of my students. She is my child student; the one I have taught the longest, and I really like her and her mum. So it's nice they invited us over. The girl was all 'onegaishimasu!', hoping we would come. ^_^

I've now been teaching my 'last' classes. That is, I taught my last Thursday, my last Friday, and my last Saturday. I will still teach Tuesday and Wednesday next week. So at the end of each class I've been giving everyone a Tim Tam. Several students have given me presents, which is really nice.

Tokyo Photo Scavenger Hunt

2009-08-23T06:29:00.000-07:00

I had a very fun day today. Pete organised a Photo Scavenger Hunt. Basically, you get a big list of items, and go off and try to take photos of as many items on the list as possible. The team with the most items at the end, wins. We were divided into three teams. I was with my co-worker Aya. ^_^

We spent most of our time running around Shibuya, Yoyogi and Harajuku. The race began and ended at Hachiko square. We were allowed to go anywhere, but due to time restraints, we stayed in the same area (we had five hours, which sounds like a lot, but we also had a lot of items to find).

Some example list items...

Someone waving with both hands. It's not all that uncommon to see this; particularly young girls at train stations. But we couldn't find anyone. So a few minutes before our 'deadline', we asked some random foreigner on the street if he wouldn't mind waving his hands for a photo. Hahaha...

A live cicada. Aya supposedly photographed one - I couldn't really see it in the picture she took - but I never saw one. I heard hundreds of them in Yoyogi Park, but they really are completely impossible to find...

Someone wearing leather pants. Even at Harajuku station, we couldn't find one. But happily, the Rockabilly club was out in Harajuku. These are the dudes who dress up like guys out of 'Grease' and dance to 50s rock 'n' roll in the park, complete with ducktail hairstyles and - black leather. Score! Actually, all three of our teams went to that park and got the same guy!

A kid laughing. And, a kid crying. So every time we saw any child go past, we looked at their faces. 'Oh, all the kids in Shibuya are not laughing,' said Aya.
Then in Yoyogi, there were a lot of happy kids, and we finally got one laughing. After that, we were scrutinising all the kids in Yoyogi to try to find a crying child. They were all too happy; we pondered how we could make one cry. Fortunately it didn't come to that, and we eventually found one outside a huge toystore. Hahaha.

A shirtless man. These are very easy to find in Yoyogi Park, and almost impossible to find in regular city streets in Tokyo. Today was pretty warm, but fortunately not as hot as the last few days have been (it was really humid and stifling). In fact, it was quite comfortable weather for our scavenger hunt. ^_^

Twins. I saw identical twin girls in identical dresses. My camera was permanently on, and in my hand, and in a second I had them. We had to keep a lot of different items in our mind at all times, looking around for people wearing crocs, and someone with a tattoo, and so on.

Disney ears. All of us, independently of one another, went to the Disney store in Shibuya. Actually we got quite a few of our list items in relevant stores.

A stuffed dolphin. We looked in a lot of stores for this one! Finally we were in Harajuku and I spied Kiddy Land nearby. Score!

A couple kissing. Anywhere but Yoyogi Park, this would have probably been quite tough. But I saw a foreign couple walking hand-in-hand, and they looked quite lovey-dovey, so I kept my camera trained on them, until - yes!! - they leaned in for a kiss.

Someone walking two or more dogs. If I were in Yokohama, down at the harbour, this would have been super easy. We had to actually go to the 'dog run' area of Yoyogi Park in order to find someone. A nice man was pulling a bulldog in a cart, and when Aya asked, he invited us to come with him to the area. (It was funny to walk with him; every single picnicker and couple and family sitting nearby turned to stare as we walked past, and most of them exclaimed 'kawaii!!' (Cute!))

A bald head, taken from above. We were in a large department store, going downstairs, when suddenly Aya did a u-turn and took off up the stairs, taking them two or three at a time. (This kind of behaviour was par for the course today, hahaha.) When I turned to see what she was doing, I immediately realised why - a guy with a fully shaved head was coming up the stairs past me. ^_^

A Louis Vuitton bag. This must be one of the easiest things in all of Tokyo to find. Hahaha! 'Let's look out for one as we walk,' I said, and within about thirty seconds we had a good shot.

A couple wearing masks and holding hands. Some people do wear face masks to protect against colds and flu; but this was a difficult item to achieve. So in a novelty store, we asked a random couple if they wouldn't mind wearing some children's face masks and having a picture taken. So we have a cute shot of Kamen Rider and Stitch holding hands. ^_^

87 different things to find. We got 59 of them (well, 62, but 3 were deemed 'invalid', for example instead of a picture of 'a shrine' we just had a picture of a shrine gate, etc). We got a few extra points for having 2 or more list items in the same picture, and overall our team came second, out of three. ^_^

Some of the items we *didn't* get: a cat, a couple both wearing crocs (and I looked SO constantly for this one!), a child using a vending machine, the 49th floor of a building, and the inside of a love hotel (the other teams got this!!!).

I'd love to do something like this again. Maybe I'll organise one myself some day. It really does seem better in Tokyo etc, than it would in Adelaide, mostly because people in Adelaide don't tend to run around with cameras, whereas in Tokyo you don't stand out much.

Photos

2009-08-17T06:49:00.000-07:00

New photos on Flickr ^_^

Earthquake!

2009-08-10T18:37:00.000-07:00

We had two quite big earthquakes in the last 36 hours. Here's a report on the ABC website.

Lee and I got woken at around 5am this morning; the windows were rattling violently. The floor was swaying back and forth between us. I thought 'it's a stronger quake than usual', and sat up and moved into the middle of the room (thinking to move away from any objects that could fall on me. Lee was also woken up by it (she's in Japan for the week, staying with me ^_^) and we both sat up.

Apparently it was a quake of magnitude 6.6! Fortunately we're not right at the epicentre so it was a little less powerful where we were. We didn't have any objects falling over or anything. But it was certainly the strongest earthquake I've ever felt.

Actually, there was another earthquake - during the day on Sunday - which was apparently slightly stronger, but I guess it might have been further away?

I hadn't felt any earthquakes for a few months.

Karaoke to ka

2009-08-05T07:06:00.001-07:00

On Monday I went to karaoke. I sang a few Japanese songs. Now, usually I can only sing Japanese songs if I have properly memorised them beforehand. But this time, I was able to sing several songs that I know only fairly well. I haven't memorised them; I can't sing them without reading the words. But I was able to read the Japanese characters on-screen, fast enough to sing. I made quite a few mistakes - sometimes I couldn't get the right character quite quickly enough. But I could *mostly* do it!

I remember when I first sang Japanese songs in karaoke; I could just read the first couple of characters on the screen before the sentence was gone, and a new one appeared. There was absolutely no way I could have sung even a slow song just by reading it.

I am still a slow reader, but much improved, so I am happy. ^_^

One reason for this is that now my vocabulary has improved, I can often see the first couple of characters and 'predict' the rest of the word or phrase. Or if I'm reading a whole sentence, I can make sense of the sentence, and thus my brain will more quickly interpret the characters.

This is one reason my katakana has improved only partially. I can fairly quickly read common katakana words - system, campaign, campus, cappuccino, sawa (^_^) - I see these words on lots of signs and ads. But katakana can also represent names, company names, foreign words, etc, in which case I am sadly slow at mentally translating each syllable. Another problem is that you rarely see whole passages of text written in katakana - just words here and there. It's not like you can read a whole passage and get the gist of it. All the words are unconnected...

***

One of the nice things about having high-speed Internet constantly on tap here in my house is that any time I encounter a word or reference I don't understand, I can look it up on the 'net. There are a lot of pop culture terms and references which I have heard before but never really understood.

Two recent examples - read some article where they described this guy as looking 'like Ted Bundy'. I'd heard this reference before and always thought he was the hapless goof from 'Married with Children'. Then I realised, hang on, that's AL Bundy; and I looked up Ted and he was a serial killer!

Another example, today, was a reference to Rip Van Winkle. I know he had some connection to sleeping, from Gershwin's 'Bidin' My Time', but finally looked him up and found out who he was.

Peru

2009-07-29T08:14:00.000-07:00

Today Pete came back, so he and I and A went to a Peruvian restaurants that one of our students recommended. (The student is also Peruvian. ^_^)

It was really good! I've never had Peruvian food before; had no idea what it even was. But we got this appetiser which had lots of red onion, whole garlic cloves, parched corn, octopus, coriander, and half-raw tuna in it. It sounds rather eclectic, but it was very flavoursome and yummy. ^_^ There was a kind of soy milk noodle soup with beef, and a chicken curry, and Extremely delicious and tender roast beef and mashed potato, and some kind of rice dish with lots of beans and a strong coriander sauce.

Very good stuff. ^_^

Total eclipse

2009-07-22T09:10:00.000-07:00

Today we experienced the longest solar eclipse this century. A total eclipse could be seen in the south of Japan, but here in Kanagawa we were expecting to see about a 60% eclipse.

So of course, it was incredibly overcast, the kind of overcast where you can't even *locate* the sun in the sky, let alone see its eclipse!

However! I was lucky! When I left my house, there was nothing to be seen. But when I'd almost reached my school's building, the sun become visible for a couple of minutes. There was lots of cloud passing in front of it, but I could definitely see it. It was like a crescent moon, only it was far too bright to stare at. I took lots of very quick peeks, and a few photos. ^_^

Of all the people I asked today (about 30), only 1 or 2 had seen the eclipse.

Holidays, hmm

2009-07-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

Starting to think about what I'll do for my next holidays (mid-August). It'd be a shame not to do something, but what? I'm interested in going to see the high school baseball tournament in Koshien. Apparently it's a very intense scene. ^_^ Or, I wouldn't mind going to Hokkaido and seeing the countryside, now that it's summer.

Also toying with the idea of going overseas, but I am now conscious of not wanting to spend too much money. I'll be without much income for a couple of months...

Anyway, life is good! ^_^ Summer 'officially' started two days ago - the Meteorological Dept. finally announced the end of the rainy season. And it's like since that day, God has turned up the heat - suddenly, boom, the hot air hits you like an oven whenever you leave a building.

Sign you've been in Japan too long (cont.)

2009-07-11T07:45:00.000-07:00

In this post I mentioned some 'signs you've been in Japan too long' that I found on another website. I just wanted to expand on/explain some of them.

(By now I've written over 220 blog entries, so I've forgotten a lot of what I've written. If I've written about any of these before, please forgive me.)

...you see a gaijin get on the train and think "Wow, it's a gaijin!"

'Gaijin' is the Japanese word for 'foreigner'. (Though it's not such a polite word as 'gaikokujin', and in fact I generally don't use the word. If I'm talking about Westerners etc, I'll say 'foreigner'.)
Even though I often see several a day - and more if I'm in Tokyo - I still really notice every foreigner I see. Actually, Miyajima in Hiroshima had probably the highest concentration of foreigners I've seen in Japan, except maybe Harajuku.

...your idea of a larger home is an extra 10 square meters.

Actually, to be really honest, my idea of a larger home is an extra 3 or 4 square metres... after all, my whole apartment is less than 10 square meters... hahaha...

...you think the natural location for a beer garden is on a roof.

I went to a beer garden on a roof this week! It's on Kawasaki More's - it only becomes a beer garden in the warmer months of the year. Last year I was totally oblivious to its existence, so this year I was happy to have the chance to go. (It's really nice weather for sitting outside in the evening.) Better still, I went with one of my classes - four nice, cool guys, and me - lucky. ^_^

...you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts.

I don't do this but I have actually become more self-conscious and aware of this unspoken rule. I don't know the exact months, but until around April-ish, people almost always wear long sleeves; until the start of July-ish, people don't wear tank tops, but t-shirts or short sleeves (or still long sleeves). People often dress for the time of year rather than the actual weather.

Also, regarding short sleeves, it's true that Japanese girls seem to have no problem wearing really short shorts, that show off their whole leg, but tend to be a bit more conservative on the upper half of their body. You don't see that many girls with exposed shoulders or low necklines. If someone is wearing, say, a halterneck top, I tend to immediately notice them in a crowd. And if it's not the right 'season' to be wearing warm or cool clothes (no matter what the actual temperature is on the day), people might ask you 'aren't you cold?!', even if it's a perfectly warm day.

Anyway, as a result, I tended to feel more comfortable wearing t-shirts than wearing tank tops. I still wear tank tops (I always think 'well, I'm 'different' anyway, it's my prerogative') but I am a bit more conscious of not looking like the people around me. Not only because I wear tank tops, but because my weekend clothing tends to be a fair bit daggier and more casual than that of the people around me. Most Japanese girls are slim and wear clothes that look carefully put together.

...you have over 30 small, transparent plastic umbrellas in your entrance even *after* donating several of them to taxis and JR recently.

I still often get caught out without an umbrella. The weather here is quite changeable and it does rain a *lot* more than in Adelaide. Japanese people seem to have an uncanny prescience; it's rare to see anyone running without an umbrella; but I'm often borrowing umbrellas, taking them home from work, etc.

...you believe that the perfect side dish to eat with a juicy, deep-fried pork cutlet is a pile of raw, tasteless, shredded cabbage.

Seriously, if you go to a tonkatsu restaurant, that's what you get. And it's not just a pile, it's a huge MOUND.

...it doesn't surprise you that a case of beer has the same per unit price as a single can.

This is both a good and bad feature of Japanese shopping.

In Australia, three things are generally true:
-if you wait for a while, a product will often go on sale
-if you go to different stores, the same product will be available for different prices
-if you buy more of something, the price will usually be less per unit

However, these are not always true in Japan. For example, there was a popular book I wanted to buy, which was about 2000 yen. I didn't buy it at first - and I looked for it in four different stores. All the stores had the exact same price, and even now, almost a year later, it is still 2000 yen in every store. No store had any kind of 'sale' where they discounted the prices.

Another example is that when I went to Hiroshima, I booked a return trip. You would expect that if you booked a return train trip, the price would be less than if you booked two one-way tickets. But here, it's literally one-way price + one-way price = return price.

A third example was when I was buying cookies. I couldn't decide whether to buy one, or two packaged together (they had prices listed for one pack, or two). Then I realised that the price for the two packaged together, was just the same as the price of two individual cookies bought separately.

These things are bad because there's less chance to get a good deal. But they're good because it makes decision-making easier, and you don't have to trawl several shops looking for the best deal.

Jitsu wa...

2009-07-10T08:05:00.000-07:00

Actually, the truth is, I'm not very happy about finishing my job, etc. Like, a few months ago I had to decide whether I'd renew my contract or not - I thought, well, I'll probably be quite ready to leave by then, I'll have done most of what I want to do in Japan, etc.

Now I'm kind of regretting my decision. I like my school *so much*. Recently, the classes which used to stress me out a lot, I've been able to take in my stride. I think I've improved a lot as a teacher, and my rapport with the students is the best it's ever been. I've even become pretty good at teaching kids, and the kids' parents like me.

I'm gradually starting to make friends with a few more students; twice this week I went out with different groups of students after work. I've had a few new students recently, so I feel bad about when I'll have to announce my imminent departure. That's the thing with this job - it's all about relationships; it's not like quitting an office job. All of my co-workers are really, really great. I like where I live; I like the location of my school; I like my lifestyle.

Basically, there's almost nothing I don't like, and so I'm really not feeling ready to leave. I wish there were some way I could stay on.

Quick update

2009-07-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

Hi,
Just a quick update to let you know what my plans are. There is still nothing set in stone, but here's what I am *thinking*:
After I finish my contract, I might travel for 3-4 weeks, including going back to visit Adelaide.
Then I'll come back to Japan in early October and study Japanese full-time-ish for 1-2 months. I'll try to pick up a bit of part-time temp work.
After that, I might try to find full-time work in Japan so as to stay a bit longer.

At the moment I'm looking into options and working out the logistics. So plans might change. Just thought I'd keep you in the loop of what I'm thinking. Hope you're all doing well!

Hiroshima and Miyajima, cont.

2009-07-07T07:21:00.000-07:00

(Incidentally, today is Tanabata, the star festival. In Yokohama, I can report there is one star visible in the clear night sky.)

Day 2 - Miyajima

Day 2 started with another huge feast at the ryokan. I checked out and walked around Miyajima for a while. The rain had stopped, and as the morning progressed, the sun peeked out more and more.

If I'd been going hoping to see all the tourist draws, I'd have been disappointed. The aquarium and the ropeway were both closed. Fortunately I wasn't planning to see either of them. I went instead to Daisho-in temple.

Usually when I visit a shrine or temple in Japan, I don't have any strong feeling that it is a religious place. There are families there, giggling girls buying good-luck charms, tourists snapping pictures.

This temple was different. Its setting was quiet, and prettily green; it reminded me of Kyoto or Kamakura. And it was full of interesting religious objects. There was a mandala made of coloured sand, contributed by visiting monks from Tibet. There was a cave containing 88 icons representing the temples of Shikoku, with soil from each; it was said that if you go through this cave, you needn't visit the temples of Shikoku.

(There are 88 famous temples in Shikoku; one can visit all of them on a pilgrimage, in which case one is following in the footsteps of the founder of Shingon Buddhism. This temple in Miyajima is a Shingon Buddhist temple. One of my students, with her husband, took this pilgrimage when she lived in Shikoku. She showed me a picture of the two of them, many years ago, both clad in pilgrim's clothes.)

There are many collections of statues; there was one walk lined with 500 men, each with its own facial expression. There are also sutra wheels you can spin; spinning a sutra wheel once will will be equivalent to reading their text in full. A monk was beating a drum, which sound reverberated across the temple grounds. There was free tea for visitors.

One thing that did interest me was the 'cute' statues everywhere. Some of the statues were imposing; some were stately; some were dignified. But there were an awful lot of them that looked rather like cute, 'chibi' anime characters.

I usually don't really care for temples, but I liked this one. I also went to Itsukushima Shrine. This shrine is almost like a red network of piers, 'floating' on the water. When I went here in mid-morning, it was lapped by water. When I walked by a couple of hours later, half of it was dry. The tide was going out.

The famous red torii gate in the ocean can be approached when the tide is low; however I only saw it at high tide, 'floating'.

The little streets of Miyajima have a real old-style Japanese feel to them (most of the stores are souvenir shops). At night they're lit with lanterns. And there really are a lot of deer. Visitors are not supposed to feed them, but sometimes they will take matters into their own hands (an American woman, who took my picture, had a map with a big chunk bitten out of it...).

I walked around quite a bit. There were a lot more foreigners on Miyajima than I've seen anywhere in Japan for a long time. I always feel kind of excited when I hear an Australian accent. There were a few on Miyajima.

I bought the obligatory Miyajima omiyage of 'momiji manjuu'. Momiji is a Japanese maple - I believe Mum and Dad have one in their garden? and kind of a symbol of Miyajima. Manju is a kind of Japanese sweet, it's like a little cakey thing with bean paste inside. Some of the manju have different fillings.

In Miyajima there were a number of shops with big, manju-making machines, filling maple-leaf-shaped impressions with the manju mix, and cooking them. I bought a box for my school (they have gotten quite a bit of omiyage from me this year, with all my travels ^_^) and she threw in an extra, chocolate one, for makeweight. ^_^ I ate it on the train home.

(I still can't say I'm a fan of Japanese confectionary, though...)

The other specialties of Miyajima seemed to be iwagaki, fish cakes, and anago (conger eel). I'd tried conger eel at my ryokan - it was delicious - and fish cakes too. But nothing would tempt me to try iwagaki. I don't care if it's barbecued, broiled, stir-fried, whatever - no matter how you prepare them, oysters are *still* like eating a big wad of mucus. And I'm sorry if that's a disgusting mental image, but that's how they make me feel!!

After I was done in Miyajima - and it really was a nice place, especially as the weather cleared up - I took the ferry back. I couldn't believe that on such a nice day, I was the only person on that ferry who was sitting outside. Every Japanese person was sitting inside in the air conditioning, watching the TV screen or reading comic books, etc. So I enjoyed the fresh sea air in peace and solitude. ^_^

I took a streetcar back to Hiroshima city.

Hiroshima atomic bomb memorials

In Hiroshima I went straight to Genbaku Dome (Genbaku means 'Atomic Bomb'). This shell of a building was located very near the epicenter of the bomb blast and was one of the only buildings in the whole area to survive, albeit in a ruined state. As time went on, and other A-bomb-damaged buildings were restored, the people of Hiroshima decided to preserve this domed building in the same condition it was after the bombing.

Around this building is the peace park. By this time the weather was warm and sunny, and very nice for walking around the park. I had lunch at a little outdoor Italian restaurant by the river.

The peace park is full of various monuments and statues. One of them is the children's peace statue; its erection was motivated by the story of Sadako and was supported by her classmates. (Sadako is the girl who died of leukemia a few years after the bombing; she was famous for trying to fold a thousand paper cranes to make her wish of living come true.)

This statue is surrounded by masses of paper cranes, many of them arranged in shapes and pictures. When I came to the statue, a group of schoolchildren was gathered around its base, holding posters for peace. They sang a song together, and all bowed toward the statue.

There's also a peace bell, which you can ring. I had nothing to leave, but I rang the bell. There's an eternal flame, burning near the peace memorial museum. There's incense burning. Somehow I didn't like the idea of burning anything to commemorate the bombing. It seemed like there was quite enough burning already. I preferred the bottles of water placed at the front of the Genbaku Dome. They say that after the bombing, countless people, burned all over their bodies, cried out for water, but there was no water to be had. So now, 63 years later, people leave water in memoriam.

I went to the peace park museum. It has a lot of exhibits and information - about the science of atomic bombs, how Hiroshima looked before and after the blast, the events leading up to it, etc. The obvious, overwhelming thrust of the museum and its displays is the human cost of a nuclear attack - most of the victims of the Hiroshima A-bomb were innocent civilians, and most of the human mementoes and relics in the museum were of children. Burned clothing, bags, toys, a blackened shoe; sometimes they were all parents had to identify that their children had died. One mother had even saved part of their young son's skin and fingernail to show the boy's father when he returned from war.

These sad remainders were on display at the museum, accompanied by short footnotes, frequently, stories of love - so-and-so struggled to reach her family, and, despite her family's ministrations, finally died in her mother's arms.

Sadako's story was again told here, in more detail than at the children's monument. On hearing she had less than a year to live, her parents bought her a pretty kimono, which she was delighted to receive. At the museum they had some of the cranes she had made. Actually, they were really tiny. Some of them were about the size of a macadamia nut; she had folded the creases with a needle.

At the time of the blast, a lot of students and civilians had been mobilised into the streets for demolition work (to create fire breaks in the event of air raids). As so many people were outside at the time, that many more were killed or injured. 8:15 was the time of the attack; there were also pocket watches on display, blackened and mangled, which had stopped at that exact moment.

The museum also, obviously, strongly promotes nuclear disarmament. There were masses of copies of letters of protest by the mayor of Hiroshima to the heads and ambassadors of different countries with nuclear weapons (including his latest one, written to North Korea).

After I left the museum, I was sitting in the park, enjoying the afternoon sunshine, and an old man came up and sat beside me. He was 67 years old, he said, and he was 3 years old when the war finished. His father was working in Hiroshima at the time of the A-bomb attack, and was killed in the blast. His mother, thereafter, had to get a job to support the family; and so they were were poor.

He was a nice man. He said he was studying English conversation, and wanted to go to Cairns some day.

Soon after that I had to get going back to Hiroshima station to take my shinkansen home.

Miyajima and Hiroshima

2009-07-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

This blog's turning into a travel blog... so far this year I've done short trips to Niigata, Izu, Seoul (South Korea), Okinawa, and now Hiroshima and Miyajima. Still on the list are Nara/Koshien (I want to see the baseball), Yakushima, and Hokkaido/Furano, in summer.

Day 1

There's always something exciting about setting off on a trip, and knowing that within a few hours, you'll be somewhere totally different. I was particularly glad to be eschewing airports this time; I like trains (and there's something very cool about getting on a train and hearing 'the next stop will be Nagoya', rather than 'the next stop will be Kozukue'). Even though the shinkansen was a bit more expensive than flying, it's worth it not to have go to the airport. Shin-Yokohama station is not so far from my house, so I was able to hop a shinkansen (bullet train) pretty conveniently.

Once I got there - and the scenery got increasingly overcast and gloomy-looking - I left the station, full of confidence. I thought to myself, every time I travel, I do less and less research before I leave. Today, I don't have a map, don't even know the names of Hiroshima's famous sites, and have no idea where to go after I leave the station or even what exit I should take. But now, I know Japan, and I can always ask someone in Japanese if I want to. It's nice to be a seasoned traveller and be able to get your bearings and enjoy discovering a new place from scratch!

With such congratulatory thoughts it was inevitable and predictable that I immediately set off and got very lost.

Even after asking at an information desk, and getting maps!! I really am a sad case. And the reason I didn't ask for directions was because I was *following* the street names and had no idea I was lost until I suddenly caught site of the name of the 'chome' and realised I'd walked in a very neat, 45-minute square around the station!

Very disgruntled to walk for 45 minutes and find myself back at the station entrance. >_<

What I had been looking for was 'Okonomi-Mura' (Okonomiyaki Village). As I've mentioned, every Japanese place is famous for some kind of food, and Hiroshima is famous for Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki is a kind of vegetable pancake (usually with various meat/seafood too), and the Hiroshima variety is made with noodles. After failing so spectacularly to find Okonomi-Mura, I gave up and with a bad grace ate some okonomiyaki at a restaurant near the station. It was nice, but I was in a bit of a grump, as the afternoon was starting to wear on, the weather was still looking bleak, and so far I'd gotten nowhere.

Anyway, after this, I asked the information desk (who must have been surprised to see me back so soon) where the interesting shopping part of town was and took a streetcar (tram) to Kamiya-cho. Hiroshima has a *lot* of streetcars. In Kamiya-cho I immediately located the nearest Starbucks (^^;) and wandered around some shopping streets. I looked around a bit (I enjoyed it, but most major Japanese cities tend to look the same after a while...)

I noticed a large amount of Carp merchandise. The Hiroshima Carp are the local baseball team. There are a *lot* of Carp souvenirs, posters; even the sewer caps are painted with Carp pictures. You can buy Carp curry, Carp noodles, etc. I couldn't help myself; I bought Carp toilet paper. Some respect they show for their team!

I did think the sheer volume of Carp souvenirs was quite amazing, though. Like, surely most of the people buying Hiroshima souvenirs are people from other cities, right? And those people are highly unlikely to be Carp supporters, but rather, supporters of their own home teams, right? Why would they want to buy masses of their 'enemy' team's goods?

Well, whatever...

Anyway, I headed down to Miyajima. If you do go to Hiroshima, I recommend that you stay on Miyajima, and if you can give yourself a full day and two nights there, so much the better, especially if the weather is good. Hiroshima itself is okay - and I really recommend the Peace Park area - but for the most part it seems to be kind of an unremarkable, ordinary Japanese city.

Miyajima is an island in Hiroshima prefecture, a little south of Hiroshima city. It's a big tourist draw, and its most famous structure is the large red torii (shrine gates) that stand in the ocean as an 'entrance' to the shrine there, Itsukushima. The whole island is considered sacred. The plants and animals are all protected, so the island is full of nature. Most notable are the deer which wander all over the place, even in the shopping streets.

Miyajima is often described as one of the 'Three Most Beautiful Views of Japan'. As I took the ferry in, I couldn't agree. It was raining lightly; the whole sky was dark with clouds, and the island was dull and indistinct. The island was a huge mass of trees and greenery; thickly wooded; I thought that it would probably be very beautiful on a sunny day. I saw the famous torii from a distance and felt glum. (I spent quite a lot of money on this weekend trip.)

However! As soon as I arrived on the island, my bad mood finally stopped, and I super enjoyed the rest of my trip. For a start, I checked into my ryokan (traditional Japanese inn).

Now, there is nothing like a ryokan for relaxation. I love them. You come into your room and there's a hot teapot waiting there for you to enjoy some relaxing tea while sitting on the zaisu (floor-chair - a chair with a back, but no legs, so you are sitting on the floor). Tatami mats are comfortable under foot, and you know that later that evening you're going to have a multiple-course banquet brought out for you, and there'll be a hot, steaming Japanese-style bath you can enjoy. ^_^ And you can walk around happily in yukata and slippers.

The ryokan I stayed at had a little observatory room on the top floor - a cosy room full of comfortable chairs and 360 degree windows, so you could see the town from above, a mass of Japanese-style roofs, a tiered, red pagoda rising up behind them, and the ocean stretching out for miles.

Soon after I checked in I had dinner. The proprietress brought me dish after dish. I had raw salmon, horse mackerel and flatfish; conger eel; asparagus; sea bream in cheese and miso sauce; deep-fried tofu in soup; a kind of custard-y nabe; steak in blueberry sauce; miso soup; pickles; rice... and finally, mikan (tangerine) sorbet. Everything was sooo delicious. ^_^

After dinner I went walking on the island. By now it was night, and all the shops were closing; it was dark and very few people were around. I saw a shopkeeper's cat eating its dinner; the cat's owner came out to toss a few scraps to some deer waiting outside her door. I walked down to the torii, which was gently illuminated. The light rain stopped. In the darkness, it didn't matter if it was overcast. It was beautiful. The tide was high, and, peering into the ocean, I could see quite a few fish, as well as a manta ray, swimming.

I walked quite a long way, and there was nobody around at all, only a few deer; it was completely silent except for the sound of a running river, and the occasional frog.

Random updates

2009-07-03T06:54:00.000-07:00

Today I taught a class on 'telling jokes'. This class could really be subtitled 'ruining jokes', or 'explaining why a joke is supposed to be funny'.

It's a truism is that if you have to explain a joke, it probably isn't funny.

To me, the funniest 'joke' of the lesson - which had me, for some reason, laughing hysterically (to the bewilderment of my students), was in the answers to the listening section.

Some previous teacher had written the correct answers to the questions in my book - 'true', 'false', etc. The final question was: "listen to the joke one more time. Do you think it's funny?" According to my textbook, the correct answer is 'NO'.

***

It's often observed by bloggers that during your stay in Japan, you will be a) complimented on your ability to use chopsticks (as though it weren't something that could be learned in a couple of days), and b) informed that Japan is unique because it has four seasons (as though this weren't a quality shared by every non-tropical country in the world).

Score! In the last couple of weeks, I was complimented on chopstick use *twice*. Sadly, one of these came from someone who *knows* I have been in Japan for about a year and a half. If I could not use chopsticks by now you'd have to conclude I had some kind of debilitating condition, the kind you'd be taking medication for.

Also, last weekend, a student asked me how many seasons we have in Australia. I said four, and she asked me if they were similar to Japan's. Well, the winters are a bit less cold, and the summers have more variation in temperature, I said. She told me emphatically that Japan has four seasons.

I appreciated learning this. Thank you.

***

I'm going to Hiroshima this weekend. I bought some train tickets today. I'll stay on Miyajima. Several people have told me that Miyajima is considered one of the 'Three Most Beautiful Views In Japan', but to my amusement, nobody could remember the other two.

I went to the discount ticket counter in Azalea and asked them if their shinkansen tickets were cheaper than at the station; they said yes. So I requested tickets from Shin-Yokohama to Hiroshima. She said they wouldn't be available until tonight or tomorrow. So I said I'd be back after 9 o'clock. I came back and got the tickets; there was no time printed; when I asked, she explained that I had to go to the station to confirm a time.

So I went to the station, entered my tickets in the machine, and unintentionally bought two one-way tickets to Hiroshima, rather than one to Hiroshima and one return to Shin-Yokohama. So then I had to go to the counter, explain the situation to the man, and tell him what I wanted to change the ticket to.

The only reason this is of note is because all these exchanges took place solely in Japanese. Yay! ^_^

Doing stuff

2009-06-28T08:50:00.001-07:00

Since my last post was a bit long I decided to continue on a new one.

Ghibli museum

On Monday I finally got to the Ghibli museum. I've been meaning to get there for some time now, and finally managed it. You see, this museum has a system whereby you have to book tickets from a convenience store, in advance. Last year I tried to go there during summer holidays; checked three weeks before, and every time slot on every day was fully booked. Going on a Monday, however, was a matter of going to the convenience store at 2pm and buying a ticket for 4pm...

It's a bit of a trek out to Mitaka but I enjoyed it. The museum is designed as a big, rambling house to explore - full of odd chairs and mysterious doorways and winding staircases, and so on. You could watch a 15-minute animated short, and see animation techniques, and so on. There was even a cat bus for kids to play on. ^_^

Muza

Recently I went to Kawasaki Muza. Muza is the concert hall in Kawasaki; it's right next to the station and one of the most recognisable buildings in Kawaski. I'd never been there for a show, but a student invited me; her daughter (a former student) was playing bassoon in a concert. (For ages, my student told me she played the 'faggot'. Until today I never realised what instrument she actually played. Now I realise that 'faggot' is the German name for 'bassoon'.)

We sat in the front row at the concert. After the show I went out with her family to a buffet restaurant. Unsurprisingly, I wasn't allowed to pay... it was very nice of them and I felt very well treated. ^_^

(BTW, Mum, the mother who invited me is the same lady who sent you the Japanese souvenirs as a Christmas present.)

Gym

Tomorrow I'm going to a gym near Kawasaki station. My co-worker had a free coupon for two people, so we're going together. I have never been to the gym in Japan... I'm in pretty poor shape, I think...

Hiroshima and Miyajima

I'm thinking about going on a weekend trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima some time in the next few weeks. I'm looking at accommodation options now.

It makes me realise how far I've come, though, since my first week in Japan, staying in the ryokan in Kyoto, and finding the food so impossible to manage. Now, I'm looking at these hotel options thinking I would probably prefer a Japanese-style breakfast to a Western-style one...

Yokohama and irrashaimase

2009-06-28T08:20:00.001-07:00

I'm still doing stuff most weekends.

Yokohama

Last weekend was the farewell party and all-night karaoke. After that, I didn't feel like doing much the next day, so I went to Yokohama.

I don't know why, but every time I go to Yokohama station on a weekend, I'm shocked by the number of people there. You'd think I'd be used to it by now. I mean, like, waiting in long lines to exit a building, walking in human 'lanes' of traffic, and in general, seeing the kind of crowds that you might see at the end of Sky Show when everyone gets up to go home. And it's just an ordinary Sunday in Yokohama.

These kind of crowds are not that rare in Tokyo, but because I consider Yokohama like my 'home' station, and I think of Yokohama as a smaller, less bustling place, it still surprises me. Generally I don't mind crowds, but if I'm in a grumpy mood, I sometimes get the urge to headbutt the person in front of me.)

Yokohama station is a major hub station - lots of different train lines stop there - so it's naturally busy, and it's also surrounded by a dense network of department stores, in all directions, including underground. I have wandered their mazes many a time, but I still don't have it quite straight in my head which department store has which food hall, for example. (Of course, the food halls are the only parts I am interested in, hahaha.)

Before, I described pachinko parlours as the 'seventh circle of hell', but I found a close contender for sheer awfulness - the Vivre building in Yokohama. (This is the building that has an 'all-you-can-eat' dessert buffet. ^_^) I went there for the Starbucks, and unfortunately had to use the bathroom. It's full of 'gyaaru' (girls with over-treated hair, pancake makeup, fishnet stockings, short shorts... in other words, scary girls). These gyaaru are sales assistants, shrieking out the specials.

A lot of stores hire people to stand outside and shout out the specials, or shout 'irrasshaimase!' (welcome!) to people*, but I can't convey the cacophany in Vivre. All of the ladies had very powerful voices, and some were using the aid of megaphones. I think there may have also been some unpleasant background music, but I can't remember. Since I hate clothes shopping anyway, I couldn't imagine anything worse than actually going into one of those and having to endure that kind of aural assault while sorting through hot pink 80s-style off-the-shoulder tops.

*(Almost all store clerks will say 'irrashaimase' when they see you. Of course, I expect it. If I'm in a store, and a clerk sees me, and they *don't* say 'irrashaimase', I kind of think 'oh, they're ignoring me'. However, in some cases, the 'irrashaimase' doesn't sound remotely friendly, and makes me want to leave the store quickly. If I didn't know what it meant, I might think they were telling me to GET OUT OF OUR STORE!!

A lot of girls have a very nasal 'irrasshaimase' going, and some gung-ho guys, like the electronics store or fruit seller guys, will absolutely bellow it in quite a scary manner. The best is in big 100 yen shops where everyone's 'irrasshaimase' sounds like an 'I hate my job and all my customers'.

One of my students works in retail, and she says she says it's one of the worst things about the job, being told to say 'irrashaimase' to everyone who walks past. In some stores you'll even see/hear sales assistants just randomly calling out 'irrashaimase' as they walk around doing their job - in this case, they're not even looking at you, and they say it at regular intervals just to cover themselves in case someone does walk past.

In Australia, the equivalent is 'hi, how are you?', so 'irrasshaimase' has the benefit/disadvantage (depending on your POV) of acknowledging a customer while not requiring a response.)

As usual I'm going off on rambling tangents... I decided to try to walk home from Yokohama to my house. The previous week I had tried to walk to my house from my second-nearest train station, and ended up 6km in the wrong direction, in Shin-Yokohama. This was a pretty poor effort. This time I made it without getting lost at ALL. It took me about an hour to walk home from Yokohama. ^_^

Rainy rainy

2009-06-25T07:52:00.000-07:00

It's really the rainy season now. Last year, I mentioned, spring had very tiresome weather, raining every weekend, but come 'rainy season', it mostly cleared up. So last year, the so-called 'rainy season' was fairly mild and not all that rainy.

This year, we had a beautiful spring with lovely weather, but the rainy season is really living up to its name. It's been raining two days out of three for the last couple of weeks. It rained yesterday, and the day before, and the morning before that, and so on. I kept getting caught out at work without an umbrella. We've had thunderstorms, drizzle, all-day sousing rain...

And it's getting really humid. I've been busting out the shikke tori (de-humidifying pellets) again, and they are collecting quite a bit of water.

All the ajisai (hydrangeas) are in bloom and the greenery is so lush in every crack and small place it's able to grow; if this weren't a concrete jungle, it would be a phenomenal mass of plantlife.

Oyakodon

2009-06-21T10:36:00.000-07:00

I just made some delicious oyakodon, which is a chicken and egg mixture on rice. The name 'oyakodon' literally means 'parent child bowl' (which is kind of disgusting when you think about it). Actually, my oyakodon tasted better than a store-bought one, because I could ensure the chicken was good-quality meat (not with big pieces of skin, fat, etc -_-).

You can see what oyakodon looks like here on Google Images.

Here is the recipe. ^_^

This will make 3-4 servings.

Ingredients
lots of steamed rice
chicken breast/thigh (I don't know how much I used, maybe 300g or so)
1/2 leek (I used half an onion instead, frying it before adding it to the dish)
1 bunch mitsuba/trefoil (I forgot to buy this so I left it out)
4 eggs
1 1/4 cup 'dashi' stock
3T mirin
3T soy sauce

Method

1. Cut the chicken into small cubes. Slice the leeks thinly, diagonally. Cut the roots off the mitsuba and chop roughly.
2. Beat the eggs in a bowl.
3. Put the dashi stock, mirin and soy sauce in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Then add the chicken, and reduce the heat to medium.
4. When the chicken is almost cooked, add the beaten egg, pouring it over the top with a circular motion.
5. When the egg is half-cooked, turn off the heat and add the leeks and mitsuba.
6. Put steamed rice in bowls, and put the 'oyako' mixture on the top.

I also seasoned it with a bit of salt and pepper.

おいしい！ (Delicious!)

Changes

2009-06-21T09:02:00.001-07:00

We're having some changes at work at the moment. This week was Pete's last week, and we have a new teacher, from Australia. Let's call him Dan. We had a farewell/welcome bash for them last night. Unfortunately Pete was pretty under the weather, so I don't think he could enjoy it as much as he would have... I'm going to miss having him around. He's one of the most positive people I've ever met. His next plan is to go hitchhiking, which is pretty cool.

It was a good party though. Afterwards, we went to all-night karaoke and I got home at 6am. Being at events like this reminds me of how much I like my school and all the staff/students in it. And it reminds me how much I'd like to do far more things with students; I'd happily go out three or four times a week if I could. But it can be difficult to organise.

So work is going fine but it's a little bit busier than usual; I've been doing more of the little random jobs like doing English tests with students, meeting new students, chitchatting in the lobby, etc. I realised I can do it quite well; even if things happen like materials going missing, or losing out on prep time, I find I have enough experience now to kind of wing things a bit more.

Basically, what it comes down to is I like my job - I like the job itself, I like my work environment, I like my coworkers and I really like the students. There are a couple of things I won't really miss - I still struggle a bit with things like crying children, and I do tend to get a bit stressed and nervous before kids' classes, though I don't think I show it.

But even teaching kids has some good points. I think I mentioned the time I was sick and my 11-year-old girl wrote me a 'get well soon' note, half in English and Japanese. Another, younger girl is often hugging me and saying 'I like you!' (She also asked me if I was in love with anyone, and if I was married, hahaha.) And last week I taught a private lesson to this 8-year-old girl. She was a lot of fun, and cute. After class she was following me around, and hugged me, gave me some snacks, and told the staff that we were friends.

Right now I'm feeling a bit ambivalent about leaving (my last day is September 2, but we are not telling students for a little longer). Now that Pete's gone, and we've done all the farewells, it feels like a familiar time has come to an end. I'm really now feeling conscious of counting down until I go. To make myself feel better about leaving, I have to remind myself:

I have a lot of nice people around me, but the nature of this job is that people come and go a lot. Actually, our core staff has been fairly stable, but various part-time teachers have come and gone; a number of students I've really liked or gotten along well with have left, and more will no doubt do so some day. So in that sense it's not like I have such a strong attachment to anyone, and I am used to saying goodbye to people, although I don't like it.
Similarly, I have made some friends in Japan now, but the truth is that most of them usually seem to be busy or unavailable to do things. The guy at Gaijin Smash had it right when he said that Japanese people often don't seem to want to do things spontaneously (or even with one or two days' warning). I find unless I 'schedule' something a week or more in advance, 90% of the time it's a 'no'. If you have, say, six different friends, and you meet up with each of them once every two or three months, well, it's not much of a social life; it's not what you'd call a really close friendship. I don't so much have a group of friends, either, unless you count my co-workers (who are good eggs).
So if I am honest, although I like the people here very much, and enjoy spending time with them, I know that realistically we are probably not going to be strong, lasting friends forever.

that although I feel comfortable and happy - like I'm in my element and get along with everyone - that I felt that way in my last job too, so there's a good chance I'll also feel happy in a new workplace.

my English *is* deteriorating somewhat. I think my grammar even on this blog has gotten slightly patchy at times. Sometimes when I speak, I skip articles ('a', 'the') or entire clauses, to make the sentence shorter and simpler. (I do try not to do this in class...)

I really do want to travel, and I really do want to try living in another foreign country.

For the record, I still haven't decided what I'll do after my job finishes - whether I'll go back to Australia, or get another job in Japan. If I get another job in Japan I ought to start looking. I guess even if I leave, if I want to, I can come back some day.

Phones

2009-06-21T08:35:00.000-07:00

It's interesting to live in such a high-tech world. I don't like the idea of being too dependent on technology, nor too 'connected'. I think it can reduce people's patience, require people to be constantly stimulated. However, there's no denying it does make life more convenient, and already it's hard to remember how life was five, ten, fifteen years ago.

For example, there was a time when, if you made plans to meet a person, and you got there, and they didn't come, well, there was really nothing to do but keep waiting, then go home (or find a pay phone and try to call their house). These days, if people are meeting, there's a 10-message preliminary exchange so that you don't really need to make concrete initial plans at all. ('I'm about to leave the station now', 'where are you at the moment?' 'I'm heading toward the restaurant, will prob be about 5 min', 'sorry, is it the restaurant next to Lawson, or the one near the park?')

I remember when I was a kid, getting books from the library, I would have no way to know whether the same author had written other books which weren't in the library, unless they were listed on the cover of the books I did have. If you did find this out, you could possibly go to Dymocks in the city and request they order it in, but this was a bit of a hassle. I remember a few years ago, I was on Amazon and discovered that my favourite ever children's book ('The Giver') had two sequels; with a few clicks I could order them and within days they were at my house.

And ten or fifteen years ago, if you went walking around the streets of suburban Yokohama, and you got totally lost (as is very common for me), and you finally found your way again... well, there'd be no way to find out exactly where you went, what mistake you made, where you should go next time, etc - unless you could procure and read a Japanese road atlas, in Japanese. I would be constantly going around and winging it, never knowing where I was.

These days, however...

I was just on diddlefinger, checking out maps of my neighbourhood, and of the surrounding suburbs, so I could see what convenience stores were where. Before I leave my house I do a quick check of Hyperdia to see when my next train will leave. I use both these sites constantly to check potential routes, work out exactly where I'm going or where I went on a particular day...

However, I'm still a bit behind the times, since a lot of Japanese people would use their cell phones for this purpose. Some people use, I think, a kind of GPS on their phone to get directions; they can check timetables; they can watch TV shows, download and read comics, take decent quality pictures (some phones; not mine ^_^), play games, whatever. People are using mobile Facebook, sending photos to friends, listening to music...

I don't know much about the latest gadgets, nor about the future of technology, but it does seem mobile technology is getting better; more pervasive; that it will be a dominating technology in the near future (as indeed it already is). People are demanding more functionality in their phones; phones are going to be used for so many different purposes that I think that the state of phones now is the tip of the iceberg; we're going to see significant design and functionality changes, breakthroughs, improvements.

As for me, I have no idea what my phone is capable of, since I'm too scared to play with it too much. I don't know exactly what my phone plan includes, but it's the cheapest sort, so I think any deviation from my 'included costs' - such as surfing the Internet - could potentially wrack up huge costs. That's probably the biggest problem at the moment - getting a service like just being able to watch TV on your phone, can cost you, I dunno, $80 or more per month. Compared to your free TV at home, it's got a way to go.

You know you've been in Japan too long when...

2009-06-19T06:55:00.000-07:00

I found this list on the website Thin Rope.

From that list, here are some I totally identify with...

You know you've been in Japan too long when...

...you see a gaijin get on the train and think "Wow, it's a gaijin!"
...you can't have your picture taken without your fingers forming the peace sign.
...your idea of a larger home is an extra 10 square meters.
...you think the natural location for a beer garden is on a roof.
...you wait for the first day of summer to wear short sleeve dress shirts.
...in the middle of nowhere, totally surrounded by rice fields and abundant nature, you aren't surprised to find a drink vending machine with no visible means of a power supply and when you think nothing of it when that lonely vending machine says
'thank you' after you buy a coke.
...you have over 30 small, transparent plastic umbrellas in your entrance even *after* donating several of them to taxis and JR recently.
...you believe that the perfect side dish to eat with a juicy, deep-fried pork cutlet is a pile of raw, tasteless, shredded cabbage.
...it doesn't surprise you that a case of beer has the same per unit price as a single can.
...you think cod roe spaghetti with chilled red wine is a typical Italian dish.
...you start to recognize BGM as a meaningful genre of music.
...walking into a crowded bar full of non-Japanese makes you nervous, because they "look dangerous."
...when you accompany your "no" by the famous waving hand-in-front-of-nose.
...you think that "Lets SPORTS yOUNG gAY CluB" is a perfectly normal T-shirt logo for a middle aged lady.
...you "gambarimasu!!" before every little activity you engage in.
...when it all seems normal.

Weird food, episode 317

2009-06-11T06:57:00.000-07:00

Lately, fewer things have struck me as strange about Japan. I'm getting used to things. This includes food. There are many things I no longer consider unusual (which is not to say I now like all of them).

However, last weekend was a new low. I went to this izakaya and the specialty of the house seemed to be raw chicken.

!!!

Pete and I were rather dumbfounded. I've eaten many raw things in this country - horse, beef, whale, oysters, fish, sea urchin, etc, etc. But, as we pointed out to our surprised Japanese co-workers, raw chicken is Not An Acceptable Item Of Food in Western countries. We are always told, and told again, to Cook Chicken Extremely Well. Even a hint of pink could result in immediate near-fatal salmonella.

(Then again, I seem to recall that in Australia, it is not considered especially safe to eat raw eggs, and I've consumed a fair few of those here in Japan too.)

Anyway, of course we ate the raw chicken, and it wasn't too bad. What really took the cake was the condiment. It looked like a bowl of clumpy, transparent, wobbling hair gel. The others were scooping small gobs of it and putting it on their raw chicken.

"What is that?" I asked.

Collagen.

They were putting collagen on their raw chicken and *eating it*.

I followed suit; it didn't taste that strong or offensive. However, when I tried just a little of the collagen on its own, it immediately triggered the gag reflex and I had a bit of trouble keeping it down. It was salty and, well, tasted like eating a gob of hair gel.

I wouldn't recommend it.

Okinawa, part 2

2009-06-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

Day 2

Day 2 we walked to Ocean Expo Park. This is the site of the famous Churaumi aquarium. It seems almost everyone who goes to Okinawa goes here. I read somewhere that it's the second-biggest aquarium in the world, but I don't know... I think the one in Hakkeijima is bigger. Anyway, they *do* have the world's biggest aquarium viewing window. It has a couple of jinbei (whale sharks) in it. And the aquarium cleverly located a cafe around it. So I had a cappuccino while watching mantas and sharks and fish swimming around.

It's pretty amazing, actually, that for the price of a cappuccino you can sit and watch such things. It reminded me of Yuzawa where we sat in the cafe with the million-dollar snow-covered mountain views.

Anyway, you can get around Ocean Park by little tour car. It was all very tropical, and such a nice day! We also went to a tropical flower park, and Emerald Beach. Emerald Beach was a corner of the park, and it was, well, a beach.

This beach was very sanitised and well-packaged. The next day we'd go to a normal stretch of beach, with horrible gungy showers and nobody around, but Emerald Beach was part of Ocean Park. Therefore you had the beach divvie'd into three sections - one for playing (beach volleyball etc), one for enjoying the view, and one for swimming. A voice would occasionally come over the loudspeaker (otherwise piping out pop music) reminding us of this. You could leave your belongings in a coin locker and then take the key, wearing the waterproof strap around your wrist.

The whole swimming area was kind of 'fenced in' with nets, and the deepest part was about waist-deep. I think this was to keep out jellyfish. Anyway, it made for a safe area, and there were a number of dads with little kids in inflatable beach toys. No mums, just dads. I don't know why.

Despite this kind of thing, and despite a lot of signs saying things like 'keep out of here', 'don't touch this', 'only swim here', 'be careful of this', 'don't climb', etc, I think Japan is generally a little less over-regulated than Australia. For example, you can drink alcohol in public places, like on the beach or in a park. I think this is *great*. You can buy fireworks - for children!! - in shops. You can ride bicycles without helmets, and generally nobody seems to care if you don't put your seatbelt on.

Of course, we should take care with all these things, but in Australia they solve safety problems with blanket bans on things. (The recent 'we can't give you a doggy bag in case you get food poisoning and we get sued' thing is a classic example.)

Although, I should mention that in the evening we tried to book a snorkelling boat trip for the next day. In the ad it claimed to be safe and fun for the family, and no problem if you couldn't swim, or had young kids, etc etc. The only problem was - we weren't allowed to go on it.

That's right, it's fun and safe, but not for foreigners. The hotel guy explained at length all the potential insurance problems they could get if I, say, touched some dangerous animal in the water. The fact that I work in Japan and have Japanese insurance didn't matter. No snorkelling for foreigners.

The next day we tried again - assuming this guy was just overly strict; after all, it would be ridiculous for an island whose main tourist draw is snorkelling and scuba diving to have a blanket ban on all foreigners participating - and got the same result. The diving shop also told us an unequivocal 'no'. I was pretty peeved, because I was *super* looking forward to snorkelling, not having done it for a number of years. I was pretty disgusted, really.

I still think we must have been unlucky; surely there are places on the island where they don't take this strict approach. But on our part of the island - and we didn't have time to go gallivanting all over to find another place - nobody would help us.

We had dinner at a place called 'Papaiya'. I interpreted this name as 'papa iya' which means 'papa doesn't like it'. But it actually meant 'papaya', the fruit... we ordered goya champloo (this is another local specialty; goya is bitter melon; it's stir-fried with egg and vegetables and spam) and tempura (including goya tempura - not very nice, really, it's *so* bitter), and taco pizza.

This taco pizza was horrifying. It was more like a taco lasagna. It came buried under a huge mound of melted cheese. After two small pieces, I felt kind of sick. Asami agreed.

Anyway, it was a very relaxing day. We finished by watching SMAP x SMAP. ^_^

Day 3

On day 3, we started the day with a Japanese-style set breakfast. This was slightly a surprise, since the day before it'd been a buffet*, and the breakfast had been advertised as such. We concluded that the hotel was not very full, so the buffet was not cost-effective.

(In Japan, a buffet is called a 'viking'. I don't know why. But I always envision a restaurant full of people wearing hats with horns and pushing and shoving each other to get the food.)

In the morning we went to Motobu Genki Mura, where we took a kind of glass window boat ride. We could see the coral reefs and fish through the windows. After, we took a taxi to Shiokawa beach; this was a quiet patch of beach which was unregulated. I could almost understand the snorkelling people's hesitation about letting us snorkel. I'd brought my swimming goggles, so I was able to swim about, and I found a *lot* of sea urchins (which are spiky and dangerous), and sea cucumbers (not so dangerous), plus eels, starfish, and other fish. So it was like a mini-snorkelling trip after all. ^_^

We'd planned to take the bus back to Naha, but our taxi driver offered to take us all the way there for 10,000 yen (about $120). It seems like a lot, but it would've saved us about 4 hours, allowed us to see more tourist spots, and only would've cost an extra $20 per person than taking the bus. Also, the actual taxi fare - if we'd paid the normal, full price - would've been more like $200.

So we took the taxi to Shuri castle, one of Okinawa's most famous draws. I realised that I really am not that interested in seeing castles and temples and shrines and whatnot. Like, it was nice, but I didn't know any of the history, so it wasn't that remarkable for me. I more enjoyed Kokusai-dori in Naha, where we went after.

Anyway, it was a very nice trip, and I'm going to be late for work if I don't wrap this up. I put pictures on Flickr. ^_^

Okinawa

2009-06-10T08:40:00.001-07:00

I've just gotten back from Okinawa.
Sunburn: BAD. ^_^

(I once said to a student: 'oh well, getting a sunburn means you had fun'. She responded very seriously, 'oh really?', as though I had just taught her a legitimate fact.)

So here's the lowdown.

Day 1

We flew from Haneda airport, and I can't tell you what a blessing that is. Narita is my bane. I hate it. Last week we did a lesson on 'pet peeves'. For a moment I couldn't think of any (which is astonishing for me, considering how many I have - the fake bird songs on train stations, train announcers who shout, the vacuousness of Japanese girls on TV, the people who lie in wait outside my department store building to try to get me to give money to earthquake appeals - how many months has this one appeal been running?! I've given to the same campaign three times over the last year and STILL they haven't left, people who smoke while walking in front of you and thus leave you in a trail of smoke, etc.)

Anyway, ahem, sorry. Narita sucks because it really is nowhere near Yokohama, and Yokohama has no international airport. If you live in the east of Tokyo, sure, it's not so bad. But the cheapest way for me to get to the airport costs about 1600 yen ($20) and 2 hours 28 minutes. Two and a half hours!! These days I generally just say 'stuff it' and come home from Narita via the limousine bus. It may be 3500 yen ($40) but it takes me directly to Yokohama station, without having to haul my suitcases on various train transfers.

By contrast, I got from my door to Haneda airport in less than an hour, including walking time.

I do like the fact that Haneda still calls itself an 'international airport', despite only having a handful of international flights (to Seoul, in Korea). If it's an 'international' airport, it has a rather poor selection of English books, magazines and newspapers (total number found after scouring entire airport: 0). Hahaha...

So anyway, I met my friend - let's call her Asami - at the airport. We flew to Naha and on arrival, had taco rice*. The airport was full of signs saying めんそーれー (menso-re-) which means 'welcome' in the Okinawan language. There were huge omiyage (packaged souvenir) sections.

*Taco rice is a typical Okinawan food, very easy to make. Just take the ingredients of tacos - taco meat, cheese, tomato, lettuce - and serve it, with taco sauce, on rice.

We began the journey to our hotel. We stayed in a hotel in Motobucho, right near the famous Churaumi aquarium. Okinawa is very much a car-dependent society, and neither of us could rent a car (Asami doesn't have a driver's license, I can't rent without an international license). To get there from Naha we had to take a bus and taxi, total trip about 2 and a half hours. Our taxi driver was friendly and talked to Asami the whole time, telling her interesting info and giving her tourist tips. I could understand a bit of it.

We took taxis a few times in Okinawa, and *none of them* charged us their full fare. The last driver lopped about $4 off the fare since 'the airport was kind of on his way home anyway'.

After we got to our hotel, we had a swim in the hotel pool. The weather in Okinawa was warm but not as hot as I expected; it was about 27 and humid during the day, but not super tropical hot; actually it wasn't *that* much warmer than here in Yokohama. Actually, the weather was really, really good our whole stay. Just perfect, and sunny. (And several people had warned us we would be going during the rainy season.)

(In Japan they have this idea of 'hare onna' (sunshine woman) or 'ame onna' (rain woman) - someone who brings good or bad weather with them. Last year I was convinced I was 'ame onna'. For example, it seemed to rain pretty well every weekend of spring (on my days off, that is; not necessarily on Saturday); it was cold and rather rainy while my sister was here; most of all, the night we climbed Mt Fuji was one of the most relentlessly rainy of the summer.

I came to have a very cynical attitude toward the weather, resenting the rain and constantly suspecting it would rain every time I planned something. However, this year I seem to have become Hare Onna, and I am delighted about it. Every time I've taken a trip *this* year, the weather has been lovely.)

After the swim, that we wanted to have dinner, but there was nowhere. I mean literally nowhere; it was 9:30 and everything was closed or about to close. Our hotel was on a dark road in the middle of nowhere; it was a long cry from being here in the city suburbs. Even in my quiet little suburb, if I walk for ten minutes I can pass at least a dozen restaurants that are open until midnight or later.

That was okay though, we bought some cup ramen (actually cup 'soki soba' - soki soba being a local specialty in Okinawa) and Blue Seal icecream (another Okinawan specialty) and retreated to our room. Our room was huge, had a great balcony, and had not only beds and a 'Western-style' part of the room, but a tatami mat 'Japanese-style' section, with flat seats on the ground. I think sitting on tatami mats at one of those tables, makes you feel like you are having a special treat, even if you're just eating instant noodles and icecream. ^_^

Actually, Okinawa has a lot of specialties, just like everywhere in Japan. Japan is big on local specialties. If you travel somewhere, you have to eat x and y. Thus, when you go to Okinawa, you should:

eat soki soba (it's a type of noodle unlike ordinary soba; it looks more like thin udon)

eat rafute (pork cooked in awamori)

eat taco rice

drink shiquasa juice (shiquasa is a fruit like a lime)

eat Blue Seal icecream*

drink awamori (the local shochu-style, *strong* liquor)

also try sata andagi (a kind of donut), fresh fruit, kokutou (black cane sugar), beniimo (purple sweet potato), etc etc

I did do all these things. I even tried taco pizza. It may surprise you to hear that this was not a good combination.

*(If you ever get the chance to try this, I can personally recommend the pineapple. It was one of the Best Icecreams Ever. It even had tiny little pieces of actual pineapple in it.)

Speaking of our hotel, though, we noticed a lot of graves around it; like little houses built from concrete. We could see a lot of them from our hotel room. I later heard this was because in Okinawa, traditionally, there haven't been many shrines or temples, so people would build these graves to house their family members. A lot of graves overlook the ocean, so the deceased can enjoy the ocean views.

Otsukaresama no kuni

2009-06-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite Japanese songs is called 'Otsukaresama no kuni' ('Country of otsukaresama'), by Kazuyoshi Saito. You can see it here on YouTube.

"Otsukaresama desu" is a very common expression here in Japan. One says it at the end of the working day, to acknowledge the hard work of one's co-workers. It kind of means 'we've worked hard', or 'good job today'. 'tsukare' literally means 'tiredness', so you are acknowledging the effort of your co-workers. I say it many times in a day, because the staff in my department building all say it to each other whenever we walk past each other in the corridors, or are in the elevator together.

Watching this YouTube video, while hearing the words sung 'otsukaresama desu', it kind of gives me the feeling of the heart of Japan.

Since there was no English translation on the Internet, I decided to try to translate the song by myself. Despite all my Japanese, I still haven't done very well at it. If anyone stumbles upon this page from Google etc, I'd warn you not to take this translation as an especially accurate one... haha...

How many times do we repeat those words in one day?
Perhaps more often than "hello"
Putting 'o' and 'sama' around those people's 'tiredness'*
the voices sound out: 'otsukaresama desu' in our daily lives

*[In other words, 'Honouring those people's tiredness']

Kindly, and strongly, and with all our effort
That's what living life is like, but it's difficult
Love, and work, are important in your mind
We exchange the words "Otsukaresama desu" in our country

I understand painful things, but I don't understand them
There are sorrows that separate people; each person bears their own
I really can't say these things, so what I will say is:
Thank you; it'll be okay; otsukaresama desu.

Wanting to cry, and facing the uphill roads
You've taken so many times before...
I can't wipe away those people's tears, so...
Smiling, I'll say 'otsukaresama desu', in our journey

The heart isn't strong, but it isn't weak either
You have dreams you saw, dreams you'll never forget
Really, I don't want to say this, so the thing I will say is:
Thank you; I believe in you; thank you very much.

Life isn't just made up of bad things
The story still goes on, so, let's go
That dream, and your anxiety, and your struggles... so, from here
I'll try to say "otsukaresama desu" from myself

オーストラリアからです。 (I'm from Australia)

2009-06-01T05:53:00.000-07:00

When I meet any Japanese person 'on the street', their first question is usually 'what country are you from?'

On hearing 'Australia', they'll usually respond by saying some random word or sentence they know about Australia.

"Where are you from?"
"I'm from Australia."
"Ohh, Australia! Nicole Kidman!"

"Where are you from?"
"I'm from Australia."
"Oh, very nice! Great Barrier Reef!"

Usually it's because they don't really speak any English and are pleased to show something they know about Australia. ^_^ Often, if I speak to someone who isn't a student, who doesn't really speak English, they will speak Japanese with sudden, random English words thrown in, as they remember them. To be fair, when I speak to my co-workers, I do pretty much the same thing with Japanese... haha...

A couple of days ago I went to Minka-en, in Kawasaki. It's a traditional folk house open-air museum, with lots of old houses from around Japan, which were imported and reassembled in this park. There were some volunteers at this park, and as I sat down to rest by the hearth in one of the houses, we got to talking.

"What country are you from?"
"I'm from Australia."
"Oh, Australia! Honey! Honey!"

For a brief, confused moment I wondered if he was flirting with me (he was at least 60 years old) but he said something about Japanese farmers and Australian bees. Today I read in Metropolis magazine: "After Japan stopped importing honey bees from Australia in 2007 following a disease outbreak, farmers growing melons, cherries and strawberries here have been forced to pollinate their buds manually." That's probably what he was talking about.

The follow-up question to "where are you from" is usually "where in Australia are you from?"

When I say, 'Adelaide', the next question is: "...is that near Sydney?"

Mm... it's really not near anything...

***

I am very happy to report that I found a source of scones.

Now, scones are rarely to be found in cafes or coffee shops here. I've found two coffee shops in Kawasaki that serve them. Both of them are very much the kind of '$12 for a single cup of coffee' place, and I just can't bring myself to go in there.*

*(Incidentally, what's with that?! The first time I saw $12 cappuccinos was in Italy, and I thought it was amazing, but at least those expensive ones were at really prime locations, like in Piazza San Marco in Venice. You're not paying $12 for a coffee; you're paying $12 for the privilege of sitting surrounded by such beauty. Here in Japan, you're paying $12 to sit in some kitsch cafe in the corner of a random department store or underground mall.)

I also haven't found them in any bakeries here - and I have been looking, all the past week, because I've been craving them.

Anyway, I have found three places which sell fresh scones.
One of them is the store 'Mrs Elizabeth Muffin' which is in the Landmark Tower. It's a muffin shop, but they have some scones. I bought a couple last week. They weren't quite like normal scones though; they tasted a bit more like cookies, though scone-shaped. They were nice though.
The other two are in my very own suburb. The other day I was walking home via a different route, and I found something called the 'Yokohama Scone Factory'. Both times I've passed it, it's been closed, so I must try during the morning.

Finally, there's this little baking school shop just a few metres down the street from my house, where there is a small selection of scones in the window, and virtually nothing else. I've not bought there before since they close at night, but today I finally got some, and they taste good. ^_^

I am very, very lucky. I've been scouring every bakery and cafe I could find in Kawasaki and Yokohama; could not find a single scone; yet on my own street!!... A student gave me homemade strawberry jam, so I'm having a little scone party tonight. ^_^

Speaking of stores on my street, *directly across the street from my house*, they're opening a new supermarket. It won't be open for another month or two, but it's kind of funny. 300m down the road is an existing supermarket, but now I won't have to walk the laborious two minutes down the road to get to that one; I can pass one every day on my way to work. It will be nice, though it seems slightly unnecessary.

Summer...??

2009-05-31T08:11:00.000-07:00

It's now June 1st, which is the first day of summer, right? After all, it's the first day of winter in Australia, and our seasons are opposite.

But... maybe it isn't. This week I mentioned to a couple of classes 'only 3 days until summer!' and they looked baffled. No it isn't, they said. When does summer start? I asked. July, they all agreed.

...?

I asked Pete when summer starts. He said: June 21.

So, we have three different countries saying three different things. Shouldn't there be some kind of international agreement when it comes to something as basic as seasons??

Anyway, I asked my students:
"When does spring start?"
"The beginning of March."
"So... spring is... March, April, May, June...?"
"March, April, May."
"But summer starts in July...?"
"Yes, June is the rainy season."
"That's not a season."

In my kids' classes I frequently ask 'what's the season?' and then show the answer ('spring!'). I don't really know what to do there...

[Edit: Today, I asked Ryu. He said that summer starts in *late* July! And finishes at the start of September. So summer is less than two months, I asked? Yes, he said; spring and autumn are longer than summer and winter. Hmm...?]

Keyboards

2009-05-28T07:44:00.000-07:00

Using Japanese keyboards is really messing with my punctuation.

At work, I use Japanese keyboards; the letters are all in the same location, but some of the symbols are different. Apostrophes are now on the '7' key, the apostrophe is a colon :, the @ symbol is next to the P, etc.

At home, I have a MacBook I bought in Japan. On the keyboard are printed the Japanese keyboard symbols. However, I've formatted my keyboard so that it uses the standard English format. If someone who couldn't touch type symbols tried to use my computer, they'd be in for a lot of confusion. Pressing the " key gives you a @, pressing ( gives you a *, pressing ) gives you a (, and so on.

Anyway, I can usually make the mental adjustment, and hit different keys according to where I'm using a computer. But sometimes if I've been using the work computers too much, I come home and keep screwing up.

***

While on the subject of keyboards, I thought I'd explain how Japanese people can type Japanese. As you may know, the Japanese written language consists of three character sets - hiragana and katakana (which are phonetic - ka, ke, ki, ko, ku, etc), and kanji (the Chinese characters, of which there are thousands, and most kanji have several potential pronunciations, depending on what word they are in).

(You'll need to have a computer which enables Japanese characters, to see the next part properly.)

However, typing in Japanese is actually quite simple. You write using English characters, and the computer converts them as you type.

For example, let's say I want to say 'Nihongo o benkyou shite imasu' (I am studying Japanese).

I type 'ni', and after I finish writing the 'i', the text changes to the Japanese hiragana character: に
Now, I'm still writing the same word, so I just continue typing. ho becomes ほ, n becomes ん, go becomes ご。
にほんご (nihongo)
Now I have finished this word and I want it to translate it into kanji. So I press space.
日本語 (nihongo)
Space doesn't create a space; it changes the characters. If the computer has chosen the wrong kanji, you can press space again and it will give you a list of potential kanji for those syllables. This is a boon for studying Japanese, if you don't know how to write something in kanji.

Anyway, 日本語 is the correct kanji, so I hit 'enter'. Enter confirms a word and lets you enter another word. (If I hit enter a second time, I can go to a new line.)

So I continue typing my sentence, 'Nihongo o benkyou shite imasu'. I type 'o', enter, be n kyo u, space (changes to kanji), enter, shi te i ma su, enter.

日本語を勉強しています。

It's very cool, and it makes me feel like I can write kanji. ^_^ Actually, though, this kind of technology (and it's a similar process on mobile phones) has led to a lot of younger people being less skilled at actually writing kanji. It's so easy to get the computer to write it for you...

If you are typing a word that *doesn't* have kanji, but is a common foreign or 'loan' word, the computer will translate it into katakana. For example, if I write こーひ and press space, it will change to コーヒ (ko-hi, which is 'coffee').

If you do write something that isn't a legitimate Japanese syllable (for example, a random consonant not followed by a vowel), the computer will not translate it correctly. For example, Starbucks may come out as Sたrぶcks. (ta and bu are legitimate characters). For foreign words, you can press a key on your keyboard to leave them as English characters, or convert them into katakana.

It's nice having a proper Japanese keyboard, because I can immediately switch to Japanese mode at the press of a button. ^_^

Ding-dong

2009-05-25T09:35:00.001-07:00

Despite my earlier predictions, I haven't noticed any particular increase in mask use around Yokohama/Kawasaki/etc, despite that the H1N1 flu has reached Kawasaki. The vast majority of people on the street aren't wearing them at all. I think some of the fear factor has died down.

However, people's personal behaviour doesn't necessarily reflect what's happening in companies and schools. Since companies and schools have some kind of responsibility for their charges, a number of them have made mask-wearing mandatory. A number of my students have to wear masks when going out and meeting clients, etc.

***

Had a ridiculous 10-minute exchange with some Japanese guy at my door tonight.

It seems like when people come to the door here, they don't just give a decorous knock, wait a few moments, then ring, then wait again. No, it's pound-pound-pound and immediately ringing the bell twice, then pounding again, all before you've even had time to stand up. It gives you a real feeling of urgency, like there must be some kind of emergency happening, and you'd better get to the door QUICK!

So anyway, I got there and the first thing he asked me was how long I'd been living here. My immediate thought was 'oh no, perhaps he's one of my neighbors and he's going to complain about hearing noise from my apartment'. But I told him, and his next question was where I was from. I said Australia, and he said: "oh! Ian Thorpe!' I looked at him blankly (because I still had no idea who he was or why he was at my door) so he mimed some swimming strokes. He then said I was beautiful - bijin, kawaii. ...

The ensuing conversation consisted of him firing off very long sentences, followed by my blankly repeating the last 3-4 words of that sentence).
Him: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah dekiru desu ka?
Me: ...dekiru desu ka... uh...

And when I did correctly understand him, I didn't know what he was on about.

Him: Can you read Japanese?
Me: I can't read kanji.
Him: When do you you think you'll be able to read?
Me: ?? (thinking I must have misunderstood the question)
Him: When will you be able to read? June? July?

Yeah, I should be able to master 2000 or so kanji in the next couple of weeks, no worries. Shouldn't take longer than that to master the entire Japanese written language, no worries.

Finally asked him 'um, sorry, but who are you?' Finally discovered that he was selling newspaper subscriptions. I find it very difficult to believe that he could persist in a 10-minute one-sided conversation with someone who understood not a lick of his Japanese, and imagine that I'd be interested in subscribing to a Japanese newspaper. He tried to persuade me I might be able to read some of it.

I don't know how to say 'I'm not interested' in Japanese, but I did latch on firmly to the word 'muri' (impossible), and after repeating it several times, he finally went away. >_<

Everybody panic!

2009-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

As you may've heard, the H1N1 flu has come to Japan, and quite a few cases have popped up, mostly in Hyogo and surrounding areas.

Japanese people seem very health-conscious. I read an article recently about someone travelling to foreign airports, such as Heathrow, where the only people wearing surgical masks were Japanese tourists. And you'll certainly see a *lot* of Japanese wearing those masks to protect themselves against real or perceived nasties. (Or, if they themselves have a cold and don't want to spread it.)

In this country, even when there are *no* health scares around, you'll find very detailed 'how to wash your hands correctly' posters. In some companies, professional, full-grown adults - I'm not kidding - are even being instructed on appropriate hand-washing procedures during company hours, with everyone in the office required to participate in a hand-washing 'class'. Japanese people are the ones that have health checks every year from childhood, and have to collect their own urine in little bottles, or record information about their BMs for school camps. Who go to the doctor for any minor cough or cold.

Unfortunately, in my cynical opinion, it sometimes seems like the reason companies etc are so concerned with employees' health is because they offer very little opportunity to take sick leave, and want to keep their employees healthy so they can be in the office, where they belong. It's like 'you should look after yourself; if you get sick, it's your fault for not protecting your health'.

Japanese people are very concerned with hygiene and cleanliness. This is certainly not always a bad thing, especially in the major cities which feature a huge population in a small area. The more we can suppress the spread of sickness, on crowded trains etc, the better.

However, in such a culture, you can imagine that this H1N1 flu has caused some fairly strong reactions. Even back when there was only one confirmed case in the country, some companies were introducing measures like saying every employee must wear a mask at all times, cancelling business trips, prohibiting all employees from traveling (even in their personal lives), or closing schools (this is a bit more understandable in Hyogo etc, where many of the affected people were students who spread the flu during volleyball tournaments, etc). University classes have been cancelled, and so on.

Of course, measures have been stronger in the affected areas, but even here, a lot of companies are starting to pass down new guidelines and restrictions to their employees.

My company has not done anything excessive, though they did cancel a few meetings, I think. I am not sure why meetings are considered more dangerous than merely coming to work every day and seeing a hundred students pass through, but I'm just relieved my job hasn't been affected. Hopefully there won't be a huge nationwide epidemic, but at the same time, with over a hundred people already affected, I don't think there's ultimately anything we can *really* do to halt its spread, apart from close down all inter-city trains etc, and effectively prohibit people in Hyogo etc from travelling anywhere.

I can't say I'm particularly concerned about the flu. Sure, I wouldn't want to catch it, but it doesn't seem to be terribly dangerous. Having over a hundred cases does sound scary, but if you think about all the flus and viruses and colds that 'go around' all the time, and don't have their numbers recorded, it's probably not that much. Anyway, I'm not well-informed enough about it to properly talk about the medical risks etc, so I'll finish there.

[Update: Tokyo has now recorded its first case of the flu. I expect that within one day, 80-90% of people on the street will be wearing masks. Even a couple of days ago, a student told me how she went to buy masks, but the first two pharmacies were sold out. At the third, there was a huge scuffle of people fighting over the masks.]

Omiyage

2009-05-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

Last week was Golden Week, so a lot of staff and students went on vacation. Accordingly, in the last week, there has been an ever-increasing pile of omiyage (souvenir gifts) in our office, courtesy of many generous people. ^_^

So this week, we had the following, record-breaking stack of boxes in our tea room:

chili chocolates from South Korea

wafers from Nagoya

coconut cookies from the Maldives

chocolate macadamias from the Maldives (different person)

chocolate macadamia Merlions from Singapore

coconut chocolate from the Maldives

chocolate coins from the Maldives

assorted chocolates from Brazil

sesame chocolate from somewhere

fish-shaped sable cookies from somewhere

chocolate mochi from Osaka

dango from Mie prefecture

A bad day

2009-05-17T05:32:00.000-07:00

In class:

Me: Are there any animals you're afraid of?
Minami: Birds. When I was a child... I was crossing a bridge... and there was a chicken.
Me: Uh-huh...
Minami: And the chicken kind of... flew up at me... and stuck out its foot... and kicked me in the face...
...
Me: You were... jump-kicked in the head by a chicken.
Minami: Yes.

Slip, dab a tiny bit, slap

2009-05-10T08:00:00.001-07:00

The Cancer Council would be distressed if they could see the status of sunscreen in this country. For some reason, sunscreen here seems to be designated a beauty product, and is sold in miniscule containers the size of my bottle of foundation. They're also priced like cosmetics, which is certainly a deterrent to anyone wanting them for the use of the whole family. They're also packaged in a quite pretty, girly way, making it look like a woman's product.

The other day I failed to bring my bottle of Aussie sunscreen with me, and had to borrow some from Pete. I felt quite guilty taking enough for my arms *and* face, from his 30g bottle, especially when I knew it had cost him about $15.

It's true the sun here is a bit less strong than in Australia, but you can still get burned. It seems quite a few Japanese women protect their skin by a) wearing cardigans or long sleeves, even in hot weather (>_<) or b) carrying a sun umbrella (which seems like an unnecessary hassle to me...)

Miscellaneous

2009-05-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

I'm back at work after a good Golden Week. In Japan, there are three Big Weeks of the year, when most people have holidays. As you can imagine, having a whole nation of people on holiday at the same time has good and bad points.

Good points:
-you can see any of your friends, as you all have holidays; families can easily spend time together
-if they didn't force them to take this break, a lot of Japanese people would probably work the whole year through with no time off at all

Bad points:
-every touristy place is CROWDED
-roads are hugely congested
-hotel prices and airfares skyrocket

I had a student who drove up to Tochigi Prefecture. The journey of 30km took him over 5 hours. !!! The Government reduced the toll on the highways (yep - you have to pay to use the highways here) so the already congested roads were packed beyond belief. Fortunately, I never had any problems with this.

***

The video shop on my street, which closed recently, has reopened as a fruit and vegetable shop. There was clearly a gap in the market for it - literally, a 500m gap. It's nice for me, because it's on my walk to the station. Before, if I wanted to buy fruit, I'd have to walk an exhausting 50m away from the station to get to the supermarket from my house. (Yes, I live 50m from a supermarket. ^_^)

This is a place where small stores can still fill an important role. In my suburb, especially, there are lots of tiny 'mom and pop' stores. When I went in there for the first time, the owner offered me a piece of grapefruit to try. I bought a bag of six apples for 150 yen (about $2). This is an AMAZING price for Japan, where it is very possible to pay more than that for *one* apple. (And most apples here are Enormous. These ones were normal-sized.)

I can get most basic vegetables here, but one thing I don't like is that capsicums are expensive here, no matter what the season. Here, capsicums are called 'paprikas' (?!) and a single one usually costs from $2.50-$3.50.

I'm going to teach a special class called 'Food English'. The main goal in this class is to try to dispel some of the Japanese English. So, as you may know, Japanese has adopted a lot of English words into the language. However, some of the words don't have their original meaning, or have been so katakana-ised that they don't sound anything like the original.

Other Japanicised words are words that are originally from French or Italian or other languages, but Japanese people think they are English and use them in English conversation.

Here are some examples of Japanese English and the translation:

chou cream (pronounced 'shoe cream') = cream puff

soft cream = soft serve ice cream

taruto = tart (you can see it's come from English, but the pronunciation is unrecognisable)

cookie and cookie = cookies & cream (ice cream flavour)

donuts = donut (they pluralise it even if it's singular, because in Japanese it's donatsu - same with shirt (shaatsu))

piman = green pepper (we don't have these in Australia; they're like small capsicums, but they have very little flavour)

one-piece = smock/tunic (that kind of long top... actually, we need a decent name for that in English...)

marron = chestnut

wear = clothes

soft drink = non-alcoholic drink (coffee and tea are listed under 'soft drinks' on menus here)

maniac = fan

arubaito = part-time job

anketto = questionnaire (apparently it's from the French 'enquête')

horumon (sounds like 'hormone') = offal

English words are popular here, but even if the English is written on a menu, it's still safer to pronounce it Japanese-style. Today I recklessly ordered a 'Bailey's Cinnamon Latte', using normal English pronunciation, while pointing to the Bailey's drinks (there were only two drinks on the poster - cinnamon and hazelnut). I had to repeat myself, and then the clerk asked me 'cinnamon or hazelnut?' ("shinamon, he-zurunatsu?")

Speaking of coffee, the staff at my local Starbucks have taken to writing little 'thank you' messages and smiley faces on my daily cappuccino.

(I'm sad to say it really is a daily habit and I am very predictable. Today, I only bought a banana*, and the girl, slightly confused, asked me if I wanted anything else. Other times, I haven't had to open my mouth. Once, the guy had caught sight of me and finished making my cappuccino before I could even get to the counter to order it. They are very nice people, at my Starbucks. ^_^)

*(Am ashamed to relate that the reason I only bought a banana was not because I was forgoing the coffee. It was because I had just finished my cappuccino at a different branch of Starbucks, which didn't sell bananas.)

Izu trip - day 1

2009-05-04T08:58:00.001-07:00

Atami - Day 1

On the weekend I went to the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka. From Yokohama, it's about 2 hours south by train (assuming you don't take the expensive shinkansen, which we didn't).

I went with my coworkers Nami (manager), Aya (assistant manager) and Pete. It was probably one of the best weekends I've ever had. They are all nice, fun people, and we went to some beautiful places; the food was good, the weather was good, we did some fun things...

So, first we went to Atami. We were staying in a kind of ryokan (traditional inn) slash hotel. In my experience, a ryokan differs from a hotel in two main ways: there are more rules, but they take better care of you, especially regarding food.

The main rules involve following a rather strict time schedule (Pete commented, 'oh, I didn't realise we were staying in a military hotel') and making sure you're wearing the right kind of footwear.

The scenery near our ryokan was beautiful. After checking in and having the customary cup of green tea awaiting us in our room, we went down to the beach. Now, up close, that beach was disgusting - the far end of it was strewn with garbage, and we found a dead albatross buried in the sand.

However, we had a lot of fun. Aya had brought a beach ball and we took lots of silly pictures and wrote in the sand.

Of course, the next day we realised that there was a nice, clean, non-black beach just 100m further down the road...

After that, we went to get in a hot bath before dinner.

I love hot springs. Atami is very famous for its hot springs; in fact, there's even a hot spring complex in Yokohama that pipes in its hot water all the way from Atami. Pete went into the guys' side and the rest of us into the girls'. We had a small indoor hot spring bath and a small outdoor one, rimmed with rocks. Very relaxing!

After the bath, it was time for dinner. Dinner starts strictly at 6, and when we went into the dining room we found many tables laden with meals, each serving prepared, ready for the guests.

Atami - and the Izu peninsula - is very famous for seafood. (I think I've mentioned this, but it seems like every place in Japan is very famous for something. Whenever you say you're going somewhere, people will say 'oh, you should try their local soba' or 'you should eat ramen there'.) Accordingly, seafood we ate.

That meal was pretty impressive. There was a huge sashimi boat in the middle of the table. I didn't eat any of it except to try one piece of tai (snapper). Then, each of us had several small dishes, such as tiny, flavoured shirasu (baby sardines); what tasted like potatoes with a thick coating of nikujaga-like paste; small shrimp to be eaten whole, head, legs and tail; an oyster; edamame (soy beans), tsukemono (pickled vegetables).

That was just for starters. We each had a kind of pot; a waitress lit candles/fuel things under each of them. These 'candles' burn fiercely for several minutes, cooking what's inside the dish. Inside were clams, which opened as they became hot, and mushrooms and bean sprouts.

We were brought a whole fish, a big orange one, divided into four bits. Me and Pete claimed the middle parts; Nami got the tail and Aya the head. Pete didn't like the eye staring at him while he was eating. We also had as much rice as we wanted, and miso soup with crab legs in it. To finish, we had ice cream and green tea. It was a very satisfactory dinner. ^_^

After dinner we went to karaoke, as our ryokan had karaoke rooms. We had an hour included with our ryokan. Then we had an hour of ping-pong, in a huge room we had to ourselves. This was a lot of fun, though I'm not good at ping-pong...

After this we went back to our ryokan and set it up for bed. Usually, ryokan staff will set up the futon while you're at dinner, but we had to do it ourselves, laying out the futon, sheets and quilts. Our room had tatami mats and paper sliding screen windows, so we opened a window to let in the cool night air.

Ryokan and hotels in Japan provide you with yukata (casual Japanese robes) you can wear in and around your room. They're a great idea for places with hot springs, because they're less hassle when dressing and undressing. Also, in Atami, with its holiday feel and quite a few hot springs around, you can see a few people walking on the street wearing yukata. (I think usually you'd only wear yukata within the confines of a hotel. It's like nightwear.)

Then there's shoe etiquette. You wear your normal shoes outside, then put on the ryokan slippers for walking up to your room, then you leave the slippers outside your room and go in your room in your bare feet or socks. If you use the bathroom, there's a set of bathroom slippers in there. You can also borrow the ryokan's zori (wooden sandals that go with yukata) to wear outside. It's easy to forget what you're supposed to be wearing...

We had another hot spring bath before bed. ^_^

Seoul

2009-05-01T08:20:00.000-07:00

Well, I've just come back from being in Seoul, South Korea, for three days. I enjoyed Seoul. I was comparing it with Japan a lot, because the two countries have a lot in common, I think.

Seoul, though perhaps a less popular tourist destination than Tokyo, is more tourist-friendly and tourist-oriented. It seems like most people speak a little English, or at least, are not intimidated by foreigners coming up and speaking foreign languages to them. A lot of stores seemed to have products geared to a foreign market, too. I think one benefit is that Seoul seems to have a tighter concentration of tourist-popular areas. Seoul is a big city, but a lot of the popular places are in walking distance in the middle. Whereas in Tokyo, the popular places are all quite widely spread.

The people were a bit more friendly and outgoing than in Japan. Several people randomly said "hi" to me, shopkeepers were genuinely smiley and friendly, and I got 'interviewed' by a couple of Korean uni students in different locations.

However, on the 'dealing with foreigners speaking English' point it's a bit difficult for me to compare the two countries.

See, I knew very little about Korea before going there; my only research consisted of finding out about some famous sightseeing places. I had booked it so soon before going (I was literally confirming the flight two days before leaving), I didn't have time to do much research. The day before leaving, I found out purely by chance, talking to one of my students, that the water is unsafe to drink. And I only realised, through putting two and two together, that Korea's toilets are like China's - you often can't flush paper, but should put it in a bin beside the toilet.

My ignorance about Korea included the inability to say even one word in Korean. During my stay I became just about familiar with how to say 'hi' and 'thank you', but that's about it. It took me a full day to learn 'thank you'. For some reason, Japanese words stick in my mind much more easily; I think because Japanese pronunciation is much more straightforward.

Anyway, as a result, I could only rely on English, gestures and so on. So I'd go up to people and just randomly speak English. I have actually never tried this in Japan. In Japan, almost without exception, I will speak Japanese first, and only switch to English if I get completely stuck and the other person has to 'rescue' me. So I don't know how Japanese people would react if I only used English. But in Korea, communication was never a problem.

Seoul seemed a bit more polluted and humid than here. The mornings were kind of hazy.

Korean food was delicious. As you'd expect, there was a lot of kimchi. Sometimes I'd order a dish and get anywhere from 4-7 little side dishes accompanying it, with various vegetables and kimchi. To be honest though, it was a bit spicy for comfort. The best thing I had was chijimi, the vegetable pancake. I had one with stalks of green onions, and octopus. Really good! But I ate far too much.

Spiciness aside, in some ways Korea is a better place for food than Japan, I think. You can get some Japanese food there, if you like Japanese food (and I do like a lot of Japanese food), but Korea has much better snacks, and a much better coffee culture. In Japan, at least half the snacks and desserts you see are pretty miserable-looking, and there are only two or three coffee chains that produce decent cappuccinos in the whole city.

I thought perhaps Japan's poor coffee was just an Asian thing. But Korea is bursting with cafes, and has loads of coffee store chains, all of which are as good as any I'd find in Australia. It was nice to be able to try some different coffee places, not just go to Starbucks all the time. Also, the Korean coffee shops had much nicer-looking desserts than in Japan.

Also, everywhere you go in the shopping areas, there are little carts and stalls, everywhere, selling freshly-made pancakes and waffles, and various fried and barbecued things I couldn't identify. I tried a few and they were delicious. ^_^

There's going to be a festival from this weekend, so some things were being set up for that. I don't know if this is normal, but we saw lots of police officers. I mean, buses and buses of police officers. And setting up sandbags, etc. Many of them had riot shields. I walked past the entrance to an underground shopping mall, and passed about thirty cops, all sitting in neat rows on their riot shields, looking at the entrance. They looked pretty young though. I'm glad I wasn't coming out of there; I'd be rather taken aback to emerge to that sight. I have no idea what that was all about...

I also saw a few cops walking down the street holding up 'Free Hugs' signs...

I went with an ex-coworker. We did some of the usual sightseeing things, and went to a club. I also got a body treatment massagey thing. Very nice. ^_^

As for the tourist places we went to, you can see them on Flickr. Okay, I really should go to bed. Tomorrow I'm off to Atami, a hot springs town in Shizuoka!

Miscellaneous updates

2009-04-19T20:25:00.001-07:00

Last night I had an all-nighter in Shibuya. (All-nighters generally happen when one gets stranded somewhere. Last trains, you know. So around midnight there's always the inner debate - should I leave right now when the party's just getting started, and get my last train? Or should I stay, thus committing myself to another five hours here?)

It was a fun night. But I was a little surprised. I thought of Shibuya as the city that never sleeps - there are lots of 24-hour places and lots of clubs, bars, etc. But a lot of those clubs and bars close around midnight. Accordingly, we did a *lot* of wandering around. We ended up in the love hotel district. I couldn't believe it. There were SO many love hotels, there must've been at least 100 or 200.

(Love hotels are places where you can rent rooms for a short time - 'rest' - or the rest of the night - 'stay'. They are themed hotels, often with decorated rooms, where couples can go discreetly... some of them were boasting Wii or DVD, and some had sexy costumes you could wear...)

***

The weather continues to be wonderful. So much nicer than last year's spring. In the last two or three days, suddenly azaleas bloomed everywhere. I never realised just how many azaleas there are around here. A student told me that Kawasaki's 'symbol' flower is the azalea. It would make sense. There's also a big underground shopping mall in Kawasaki called 'Azalea'.

***

I am hoping to go to Korea next week. It's very close to Japan, after all. I found someone to travel with (it's easier to find someone to go to Korea for 3 days than someone to go to the US or something). But nothing is booked yet, so I'm not sure.

The other night I went out with some students and we had Korean food. Korean food is Magnificient. We had bulgogi (a kind of beef and thin rice noodles dish) and chijimi (vegetable pancake), and a kind of pork yakiniku (barbecue) where we wrapped the pork in lettuce leaves. Yum!

***

Yesterday I went to the Edo Tokyo museum in Ryogoku. It was really interesting. I was lucky to get a free English guide, in what was basically a private tour. His English wasn't that high level - he could talk quite well but every time he asked me a question, and I replied in my clearest, simplest English, he wouldn't understand my answer. Hahaha...

But he was a very nice man and I learned lots of really interesting things about Japanese history. When someone explains things to you, it comes clear and alive in your mind a lot better than just reading loads of signs.

After this, I went to Akihabara for a while. They have some interesting souvenirs. I bought some Maid Cookies. (Maid cafes are a famous thing in Japan.) They also have oden in cans, and bread in cans. I bought bread in a can (with cute anime girls on the outside) for a friend as a gift. It sounds pretty gross, but it's one of those 'only in Japan' things... hahaha...

***

Life is good. I've started studying Japanese a bit again. I'm going to take a one-off lesson today, though generally I've stopped taking lessons. As I think I mentioned, I am finishing my contract in early September. I've been thinking vaguely on-and-off abut what I might do next. I'm still not sure I'm ready to leave Japan; I like it so much.

There is some possibility in my mind that I would try to stay on for another 6 months, in a different job. On the other hand, it'd be a lot of hassle (organising visas and taxes and accommodation, etc), and much easier to just go back to Australia. So I haven't made any decisions yet. I suppose it would depend a good deal on whether I could secure another job.

I hope everyone's doing well. I wish I could come over to Adelaide for a week or so, just to say hi...

Kabuki

2009-04-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

After reading this blog entry, Pete and I decided we wanted to see kabuki. Accordingly, today we went, with three friends. (Two of them are students - I went white-water rafting with one of them - and the other I just met today.)

Kabuki is a style of traditional Japanese theatre where all the roles are played by men. There is a famous, old kabuki theatre in Ginza called Kabuki-za. Next year, this lovely old building will be torn down - apparently it's not earthquake-resilient and there are various other reasons - and relocated into a more modern complex. Thus, this year is like a 'farewell' year where each month, they play various famous or favourite shows.

You can purchase tickets for a whole session - a few hours - but we decided to see only one act. It was 1 hour and 20 minutes, so it was long enough to enjoy. Since we couldn't get reserved tickets, we lined up a short time before the show. I was disappointed that we could only get 'standing' tickets - thinking that 80 minutes is a long time to stand - but actually I enjoyed it. We were in the very back row of the theatre and we had a good view, though it was at a distance. There was a row of benches behind us, though if we sat down, we wouldn't have been able to see.

They also rent out English earpieces. It's a headphone that goes in just one ear, and during the performance they give you explanations of what's going on. You can listen to the show with the other ear. This is really good, because they don't try to translate every single word; they summarise it. Eg: "Rokusuke reveals that he lost the fight on purpose. He knew that his rival was caring for his elderly mother, and he felt that he needed this job. Rokusuke was moved by his rival's dedication to his mother."

When compared with Western-style theatre, there is a lot more emphasis on stylized movements and in creating an attractive 'picture' than in representing situations in a realistic way. According to the earpiece, if you were to take photos of a kabuki show at 3-second intervals, and looked at them, each would look like an ukiyo-e (woodblock) painting - nothing out of place, each character and item perfectly positioned.

The tale we watched was called "Keya Mura". According to the Kabuki-za website:

"The evening program begins with KEYAMURA, a play from the puppet theatre, that shows a master swordsman named Rokusuke (Kichiemon) living humbly in the countryside only to meet his fiancée, a powerful woman named Osono (Fukusuke) and goes to avenge the death of her father, his fighting teacher. The highlight of the play is the contrast between the two highly contrasting sides of Osono’s character. She is a fierce fighter on the one hand and delicately feminine when she learns that Rokusuke is her future husband."

The characters wore white facepaint and traditional costumes - kimono, samurai clothes, etc - and extras, dressed all in black, would scurry about the stage removing props etc. To the side, musicians would sing/narrate, or play the shamisen, and one guy's job was to strike the ground loudly for dramatic effect. The actors warble operatically rather than speak, and they didn't seem to have microphones; they spoke loudly, but did sound a little quiet from our vantage point at the back of the theatre. Add to that the fact that kabuki includes a lot of archaic Japanese, and I was very grateful to have the English explanations.

After the show, I realised that our Japanese friends had barely understood any of it. I asked one girl how much she understood; she said 20%. But then when I was explaining some elements of the plot, they were like "ohh! So that's what they were doing?" etc; so in fact they hadn't even understood as much as they thought they had... Overall I think it was more interesting for us foreigners, and I really enjoyed it.

After the play, we walked down to Tsukiji, which is famous for its huge fish market. The weather was lovely. The market was closed, as it was night time, but we went to one of the many sushi restaurants. I still don't like sushi... but I tried crab brains (yuck) and we got a huge tuna head (delicious).

As we left, the clerk gave us all candy shaped like sushi. Pete was rather startled to find that what looked like nori (seaweed), actually WAS nori. That's right, they made fake sushi out of sugar candy, and wrapped it in real seaweed. Hahaha...

Hanami season

2009-04-08T07:45:00.001-07:00

Haven't blogged much about my recent activities but I've been keeping busy and still doing something every weekend.

Three weekends ago I went to a house party that Pete had, and then went to all-night karaoke. (^_^)

Two weekends ago I went to a hanami (cherry blossom-viewing party) with some students, and I saw a movie ('Yes Man') with my co-worker, Yumi.

Last weekend I went to a festival in Kawasaki and a kind of mini-hanami at Daishi Park, nearby. The following day I went to Odawara Castle, another popular spot for seeing cherry blossoms. Yesterday morning I went to Mitsuike Park, which is not far from Kawasaki. It's supposed to have about 1000 cherry trees.

This year I've been very lucky; the last few days have been prime for cherry blossoms (as in, the trees have been at their peak - cherry blossoms don't last at all long), and the weather has been perfect. As of last week, it actually feels like spring for the first time.

I've been taking excessive numbers of pictures, especially of the cherry trees, which are beautiful. I finally updated flickr so you can see my last few weeks on there.

Tanoshikatta

2009-04-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

Today we had a potential student, an elementary school girl. When I came to meet her she was fairly quivering with excitement. This girl's love for English had to be seen to be believed. I taught her a few words in a fairly simple way and she was jumping about and saying 'tanoshikatta!' (that was fun!!).

She was brought by her grandparents, and I don't know if my teaching was especially impressive, but there was no denying that this girl was INTO it. Before I started, she had an air of 'oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm actually about to study some English!!' In fact, her grandparents said that it was the girl's decision to come to an English school - she was the one who begged to be able to come.

After mentioning that we were having a class of that level less than an hour later, they decided, on the spot, to join. And I mean, she actually stayed around and joined that class, the same day. I tell you, seeing this girl's face, you'd think all her Christmases had come at once.

So today I had three new students in my kids' class. This class has always had only one girl - for a full year, only one student - so our lessons have been fun but more subdued and with more direct interaction. Needless to say, the dynamic today was very, very different indeed. Instead of participating in every game, I was organising them and monitoring what they were doing. I kept it very energetic and we did a lot of running around etc. I'd been a bit apprehensive about it but it was a lot of fun. ^_^

Yakiimo---

2009-03-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

I was walking home from the station and I heard this long, drawn-out cry, 'yakiimo-o-o-o! yakiimo-o-o-o!' with drums beating. It sounded very solemn and very Japanese.

My initial, ridiculous thought was 'is there some kind of religious procession happening? Is this like a call to prayer?'

My second thought was 'no, it's a "song" being broadcast through the neighbourhood, therefore, most likely it's some kind of truck going around collecting garbage. (There is an unnecessarily large number of unexciting trucks which broadcast music to announce their presence.)

Then I realised what they were singing; it was a sweet potato truck, selling hot sweet potatoes baked right there in the truck. Apparently the Japanese equivalent of an ice cream van.
If I hadn't just had dinner five minutes before, I might've gone and tried one.

You can hear the song yourself in this YouTube clip.

Yakiniku

2009-03-25T08:46:00.000-07:00

Today Pete and I went out for dinner with a bunch of students. It was a group we don't usually hang out with but all very nice people. ^_^

We went to a yakiniku (Korean barbecue) restaurant near Kawasaki station. This restaurant is great because it's cheap - beers and sawas are less than 300 yen (cheaper than a cappuccino); meat dishes are not much more!

In yakiniku, a burner is put in the middle of the table, and you put various items on the grill to cook them. So you can order various cuts of meat - they're thin and cook in a couple of minutes - and barbecue them, dip them in sauce, and eat them. They are *so* good. You can get other things too. For example, we got some vegetables, some mushrooms (they came in foil, with butter - you wrap them up and put them on the barbecue for about five minutes, and they come off oh-so-tender), and some flavoured corn, which was like eating corn on the cob. We also got this awesome Korean soup which I shall certainly have again. ^_^

This is one of my two favourite restaurants in Kawasaki; the other being an Indian restaurant with superb curry.

I had a very nice evening.

Losing money

2009-03-24T07:18:00.000-07:00

Today I got my details for my new account. This lets me transfer money from my Japanese bank account to my Aussie one.

And according to Reuters, the Australian dollar has just today 'hit a 4 1/2 month high vs yen'.

Nice timing, economy. >_<

Teaching sarcasm

2009-03-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

Today I taught the same lesson to two different classes, and the topic was sarcasm. How does one teach this? I'll go through my lesson with you. I've had trouble getting students to use this successfully in the past so I was pleased that it worked out well today, even with some students I thought would struggle.

"You're waiting at the movie theatre," I began, "and your friend is late, as usual. What are you going to say to them?"

I got one student to be the late friend, and gave some examples of rather peeved sarcasm ("I'm so glad you finally arrived", "I didn't want to see the first half of the movie anyway", etc), and then had them try. The first lady up got completely stuck and couldn't think of anything at all.

"Okay, think," I coached, "a good tip is to try thinking of the opposite situation. Let's imagine your friend is always on time, and they came early, and you're going to enjoy the movie. What could you say?"

A long pause.

"How about, 'I'm glad...'," I prompted.

"I'm glad we can enjoy to watch this movie," she said, at last.

After a little more conversation, I had them switch, and the other girl said, "it's such a nice day to be stand outside waiting for you to come".

(Today the weather actually was very nice, so in terms of sarcasm, this didn't make sense.)

So this is not the most withering sarcasm you've ever heard, but it was their very first try. And they acknowledged that sarcasm is not very common in Japanese conversation - whereas it is very, very common in English.

***

We did some listening practice. In the listening, one character (Japanese) didn't understand another's sarcasm. It reminded me of last week in our office. Pete, very unusually, had a day last week with only two classes. He said to our manager, 'I'm sorry, but I'm so busy today, even with only these two classes, could we postpone our meeting'. I knew he was being sarcastic; but he was so deadpan that the manager (who hears his sarcasm every day) took him seriously!

Then we practiced some scenarios using sarcasm. They were just reading the lines from their books, but it was a good chance to teach the importance of a Good Sarcastic Voice. We practiced:
1. The low, harsh, drawling voice ("Yeah, that's a reeeally good idea...") and
2. The fake enthusiastic voice ("Wow, that was the best movie I've ever seen!")

On the rare occasions a student has tried to use sarcasm with me before, I've usually been confused about how to take their statements; they just haven't gotten their voice quite right. I've been confused about whether they're joking or being sarcastic; this confusion never happens with native speakers.

(The exception is my advanced discussion class, one member of which is more sarcastic than I am. ^_^)

***

Anyway, after some preparatory stuff and more examples, we were ready to start them practising their own ideas. I had a bunch of scenarios for them, so I put one up.

"Your friend is going out with an incredibly boring person," I said, "what can you say? So first, let's think of the opposite. What could you say if they were going out with a fun and exciting person?"

"I'm glad you're going out with such a nice person," volunteered one.

"Good," I said, and started writing it, "but you know, someone can be boring and nice. It's better if you think of the opposite of boring."

"I'm glad you're going out with such an exciting person," she corrected herself.

So we put some ideas on the board - me changing their grammar to be more correct and a bit more sarcastic, and then they practised. (And I pointed out that while sarcasm can be quite mean, it can also be friendly and good-natured.) Then we tried another situation, and another. Each time, I got them to brainstorm example sentences, and then they could practice it more easily, without getting so stuck.

When we got the fourth situation, I didn't put any ideas on the board, but had them launch straight into it.

"You went to a rather pathetic party," I said, "only one other person came."

And they were off.

"Wow, what a great party that was," one of them said.

"It sure was," agreed the other. "I'm really glad we came."

And the next.

"You went to Niigata to go snowboarding," I said, "but the snow all melted the day before."

"Wow, what great weather it is," one of them said.

"It looks like perfect conditions for snowboarding," agreed the other. "It's a good thing I brought all these warm clothes."

***

Like I said, they're not going to be on The Chaser any time soon, but I felt excited to see them getting the hang of it. The second class I taught on this did well too. One of them surprised me by having a *great* sarcastic voice, it was actually kind of scary hearing this sweet lady suddenly busting it out, hahaha.

Snowboarding

2009-03-15T02:38:00.001-07:00

As a follow-up to my last post, one of my students told me yesterday that she'd gone to Hokkaido last weekend. It was her first time trying snowboarding. She tried, but it was so hard, and so difficult to stand up, that after two hours she gave up and went into the resort to the cafe.

Exactly the same as me, except that she did all her practising at the foot of the hill, where beginners are supposed to...

I suppose it was bad, but it made me feel very happy to hear this. ^_^

Snowboarding trip

2009-03-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

So, I went snowboarding last weekend, in Yuzawa (Niigata prefecture). This means I've now been to 12 prefectures in Japan. (Out of 47, so still a ways to go...)

I went with Pete, his friend Mark, and a teacher at our school, Maya. (I know, there's probably no need to keep giving people fake names on this blog. I guess I've gotten into the habit of it.)

We took the shinkansen up there and it wasn't until we were right in Yuzawa itself that we started to see snow. It had been a warmer-than-usual winter, so I was a bit apprehensive about the weather and snow quality, but all was well. The first day was sunny and actually no colder than Kawasaki - about 8 degrees. On the second day there, it was -3 and it snowed! ^_^ ^_^

I *love* snow. ^_^

Anyway, snowboarding was notable mainly for how bad I was at it. I was probably the worst snowboarder in the history of snowboarding. I am not even exaggerating.

General consensus before we went was that a first-time snowboarder should always take an introductory lesson to learn all the important basics. However, on realising there would be nothing in English, Pete and I decided on a more 'oh, whatever, we can figure it out somehow' approach.

Mark was going to just ski, and Maya opted out of any snow sports, so accordingly Pete and I headed up to the slope together.
I've never been to a ski slope before. Basically they are snow-covered mountains - with a minimum of trees etc - and chairlifts going up them at various points. There can be various runs on a single mountain, and each has a difficulty rating. So you might take the first ski lift up, then get off and take another one up to try a different run. Around the bottom of the runs were restaurants and gear rental places.

We started on a beginner's hill (and were later told that usually beginners don't start on a hill but at the bottom, hahaha). We hired gear beforehand. The first challenge is to actually get onto the chairlift. So, you have one of your feet strapped firmly to the snowboard, and the other foot is free. Thus, you can theoretically 'walk' in an awkward, shuffling fashion, dragging the cumbersome board with you. For me, this was very slow, and very difficult to walk up even the slightest slope, since the board tended to naturally slide down.

I think part of my problem here was also my extreme unaccustomedness to snow. I can't recall the last time I actually walked in snow - probably in London as a 7-year-old. (I've seen it since, but usually streets have been cleared off or only have a thin layer of footprint-encrusted snow.) I hadn't found my 'snow feet', so to speak. I almost feel like if I'd waited until later in the day, I could have picked it up slightly more easily.

Anyway, thankfully Iwappara resort was very un-crowded that day, so we were not holding anyone up. I managed to get into the lift - the snowboard hung heavily from my foot, uncomfortably so. But the lift ride was awesome, going up this beautiful mountain, seeing all these people skiing and snowboarding down, and the mountains all around us. There wasn't even a safety rail though... o_O.

So we got to the top and naturally I fell off, getting off the lift. Didn't matter; snow is soft. It was to be the first of many, many, many falls!!

Anyway, I'll spare you most of the details, but suffice it to say, it took me about 45 minutes to figure out how to stand up on the board. After 2 hours of trying, I had made it 1/3 of the way down the hill. Yes, one hill. I told you I was bad!

Standing up was hard because both your feet are strapped into the board. If you are standing up on a slight slope, as soon as you push yourself up off the ground, your board starts to slide forward down the hill... I eventually got the hang of it (by shoving the front side of my board forward into the snow before standing). But even once I was up, I'd often fall down straight away, or after only a couple of seconds of movement.

Actually, the moving was fun, but I couldn't keep the board straight. It kept pointing forwards and I had absolutely no control over where it was going. Again, thank goodness the slopes were not crowded. I would have been a total menace. I never stayed up long enough to actually gain too much momentum. And fortunately, falling didn't hurt, because of the snow. But it become a grind after the 60th, 70th time... it took some physical energy to keep getting up so many times. (Also, if I fell over forwards, I'd have to swing my whole body and the board around so I could get into the right position to stand up. So it was tiring.)

I was amused at the bland Japanese pop being piped through speakers on the slope. 'Only in Japan', me and Pete said - but Mark said he'd encountered music on ski slopes in New York state.

On the bright side, Pete and Mark were really nice and encouraging. We got our only snowboarding advice from Mark, who had never actually done it himself... however, Pete picked it up quite quickly. He said that he fell down a lot on his first descent, but it got progressively easier. And in fact, this weekend, Pete's gone snowboarding again!

Anyway, after two hours and 70+ falls, I finally got tired of it. It was lunch time, so I just gave up and walked down the hill the rest of the way. It felt such a relief to finally have my feet out of that blasted board.

10,000 yen for gear hire, lift rental, etc, and it was kind of a waste of money for my two hours. Still, I was glad I tried it. Better to go and fail than not try it at all, right? ^_^

***

Anyway, apart from snowboarding, how was the trip?... well, for once I wasn't staying in some cheapy backpacker's hostel, but we got quite a nice hotel, right at the bottom of the ski hill. This hotel came with dinner included - shabu shabu (a kind of hotpot ^_^),

When we checked in, the hotel was empty and the clerk seemed somewhat po-faced and didn't seem especially delighted to see some customers come in. After, I commented to Maya that he hadn't seemed very friendly. Seconds later, he emerged from behind the desk and started asking me where I was from. Oh, Australia? It's summer in Australia, right? Take care that you don't catch a cold.

As it happened, hours later I did develop a cold, but I assume this was a coincidence and not some kind of unintended jinx. ^_^

It's fun to be in a hotel in yukata. (These yukata are like a very very casual kimono... too casual/pyjama-y to be worn out in public, but within the hotel it's okay). We had dinner and played cards. The guys had continued snowboarding/skiing for some time after I'd returned, so were feeling a bit stiff. I'd done some tramping around in the snow; gone up the lift again sans snowboard, just to enjoy the ride and take some photos.

The hotel also had a hot spring. From the hot spring you could see the snow-covered trees and mountains outside, so it was really beautiful and relaxing. There was a little waterfall inside the hot spring, and both times I went there there was nobody else in there. I could even sit there and watch the snow falling outside.

I thought we were getting a breakfast buffet included, but what we actually got were pre-prepared full Japanese-style breakfasts, when we went down there at 7:45am. This was a shame, since Mark didn't come down for breakfast. The restaurant dude expressed concern about whether we foreigners would be able to eat a Japanese-style breakfast. I wanted to prove him wrong, but it would have been impossible to finish all of that breakfast. As when I had stayed at ryokan in the past, it was about 3x as big as I could've eaten at 7:45am...

Anyway, breakfast consisted of:

pickles

some kind of sodden dried tofu that tasted like very soggy wet bread

pineapple

ham and green salad

potato salad

Natto (fermented soybeans)

tofu

a raw egg

very salty salmon

seaweed

a half-cooked fried egg

steamed rice

miso soup

And a few other bits and pieces.

It was my first time eating a Japanese breakfast with a Japanese person present. Pete quizzed Maya about how it should be done. With her advice, he made a small depression in his bowl of rice, cracked his raw egg into it, mixed it, and added natto (fermented soybeans). Let me tell you, that is not a nice combination. Pete, who likes almost every Japanese food under the sun, was virtually gagging with every runny, sticky, glutinous, yolky mouthful. Yuck.

***

The second day, we went to Gala Resort, the most famous/popular ski resort in Yuzawa. The guys went off to ski and me and Maya stayed in the resort building. First it was lunch and an Irish creme cappuccino. Then we took the gondola up the ski hill. It was one of the most beautiful sights I have seen in my life. (See my Flickr page for pictures. ^_^) We had another cappuccino, and dessert, in the cafe at the top, with the most stunning snowy mountain view spread out in front of us.

We also went to the hot spring in Gala, which was also very relaxing; again we could see snowy scenery out the window. I have gotten the hang of hot springs now - where to put my belongings, what etiquette to follow - and I have to say, they are very relaxing and enjoyable when they are not scaldingly hot. These Yuzawa ones were a perfect temperature.

I also tried out a massage chair, which came complete with a screen that came down in front of your face and played soothing images of tropical beaches, dolphins, etc. The soothingness was slightly reduced by the 'Odotte Pikachu' game machine shouting 'ikuze Pikachu!' and 'Pika pika!' a few feet away. Hahaha.

***

Anyway, it was a really good weekend, except that I had a slight cold and I couldn't snowboard much. But I got to see SNOW and enjoy the company of some nice people. ^_^

Economic stimulation

2009-03-08T04:24:00.000-07:00

So, I heard that Aussies will be getting $900 handouts as part of an economic stimulus plan. Sadly, I will not qualify for this. However, Japan has its own economic stimulus plan, which I am apparently eligible for. I can look forward to the princely sum of 12,000 yen (about AU $190).

That's right. Japanese consumers are not spending enough, so ￥12,000 is supposed to turn things around! It's a pretty weak plan. You could buy a family's weekly groceries with that. Or half a cheap digital camera. Or a one-way train fare to Kyoto. It's a safe bet that most consumers will do what they have been doing all along, and save it.

However, I am not complaining and look forward to my share, thank you. ^_^

Actually, now that the Australian dollar has tanked, everything seems more valuable/expensive here in comparison. Before, it was roughly $1 = ￥100.

Today I had a ￥520 cappuccino, which was already overpriced when it was worth AU $5.20, but now equates to $8.20!! It's no wonder tourism from Australia has declined in Japan recently...

(And no, it wasn't an especially remarkable cappuccino. That's what you pay when you go to non-corporate-chain cafes here.)

Homestay

2009-03-08T00:53:00.001-08:00

A young student of mine just did a homestay in Melbourne. Sadly, she arrived one day before the 48-degree day... More sadly, though, her homestay parents had friends die in the terrible bushfires. Her host father even took her along when he visited one of the burnt-out towns.

However, apart from this tragedy happening, she did enjoy her time there a lot. She thought Australians were very warm and friendly, couldn't stomach Vegemite (and couldn't believe that everyone she asked said they liked it), thought fish and chips had way too big a serving size, loved the icecream and desserts, and thought the 'Japanese food' and sushi there tasted nothing like the real thing. Hahaha.

She agreed with me that Australians are a lot bigger than Japanese people; I said this was because Australia had a lot of excellent junk food. (Japan has some very good junk food. But Australia beats it by a mile, which is probably not a good thing, really. ^_^)

A lot of people asked her if she was Vietnamese or Chinese, for some reason. And she said that Australians say "fantastic" a lot. She and her friend got in the habit of saying it. ^_^ She said that after being in Australia, I was very easy to understand, because I spoke so much more clearly than most people.

I'm glad she liked it. She brought me back a Furry Friend and some Smiths chips. ^_^

My glasses

2009-02-23T03:09:00.001-08:00

Wow, I can't believe this...

Last weekend I went up the Landmark Tower with my hairdresser, Ryu. After that we went to a restaurant for dinner. And the next day I realised I'd lost my glasses. So that night I returned to the Tower and the restaurant to inquire, but they hadn't found them. So I left my contact details with the Landmark Tower security people, so that if the glasses appeared, someone would call me.

But a week passed and nobody called, so I resigned myself to the thought that I'd have to buy a new pair. I also emailed Ryu to ask him if he'd seen the glasses, but he hadn't.

Today I got a haircut and caught up with Ryu. He asked me various questions about my glasses and seemed more concerned than I was (not that I was looking forward to buying expensive new glasses, mind you).

And now, just then, I got a call from him. After finishing work, he travelled to the Landmark Tower himself, enquired with the staff, found my glasses, and is now coming all the way to my suburb to personally return them to me. The total travel time for him is at least an hour.

Can you believe that? I can't believe the level of kindness I experience in this country... I feel very lucky!!

Preschool class pro-Obama

2009-02-20T07:41:00.001-08:00

Today, apropos of nothing, one of my 3-year-old students suddenly said "yes we can!!" The 3-year-old boy next to her immediately picked up on it and both of them kept saying "yes we can!!"

I had never taught them this. It's official, everyone in Japan now knows this phrase.

Speaking of the small kids, one of the mums said her girl is practising the vocabulary cards at home, saying the words. Apparently her favourite card is 'hungry'. Hahaha.

The other day we had a class where the objective was "do you like __?" "yes I do/no I don't". So I had some various foods, and I grouped them according to "yes" or "no". I put ketchup in the 'no' category, so I tried to get them to repeat "Do you like ketchup? No, I don't! No, I don't!"

Instead of repeating it, the girl said, "demo ketchup oishii yo" (but... ketchup's delicious...). I guess at least she understood...

Ski trip ^_^

2009-02-19T06:34:00.000-08:00

Guess what? I'm going snowboarding up north in Niigata prefecture. ^_^ I've booked it for the weekend after next. Five of us are going; I spent half an hour in negotiations with a travel agent using my extremely poor Japanese. But with success!! There's some chance I will try skiing as well; I'm not sure.

I'm slightly nervous about it. When I said this to my Japanese teacher, she immediately told me about someone she knew who broke their leg snowboarding. When I said this to Pete, he told me that 4% of first-time snowboarders get a serious injury; 23% non-serious injuries.

When I said this to my discussion class today, someone told me about their friend who had crashed and then had another snowboarder land on top of him, resulting in injuries that required immediate hospitalisation.

Thanks for your reassurance, guys.

The thing is, I wasn't even worried about injuries. I was just worried about it being a bit too scarily fast and uncontrolled, and not being very good at it. But anyway, by and large I'm really looking forward to it, despite everyone's horror stories.

The final straw was when I was teaching my kid's class today, and we reached the listening/reading section together. I read aloud: "Sarah went skiing. She broke her foot. Now she stays in bed."

I'm sure my student had no idea why I kept laughing uncontrollably during this sad tale.

Nihongo noryoku shiken

2009-02-14T06:51:00.000-08:00

I'd just like to say that I got my Japanese Proficiency Test 3-kyuu results, and I passed.

!! ^_^

My overall score was 85%. ^_^

Writing/vocabulary: 77%
Listening: 91%
Reading/grammar: 86%

I'm really pleased. Halfway through last year, I was at the level of being able to pass level 4. In six months I did about 150 hours worth of study to get up to level 3.

I have to admit though, in the last few weeks I've had 'study fatigue' and have been too lazy to study much at all. So I'm going to take a break for a while. ^_^

The local post office

2009-02-13T07:55:00.000-08:00

I mentioned that much of my suburb seems to be under construction. Oddly, in the last two days, a makeshift vegetable shop has sprung up on the footpath outside the local post office. Suddenly the whole walk there is covered with sagging cardboard boxes full of cheap onions and eggplants and so on, the prices written on the boxes in black marker. I don't know why the post office is suddenly host to this local 'market'.

You know, a lot of this city seems so high-tech and clean and modernised; occasionally it can just feel like any city, but little things like that really bring home to me that I'm living in Asia. I know that sounds strange, but...

Day trip

2009-02-08T04:35:00.001-08:00

(click a picture to see it enlarged; more pictures on flickr soon)
(long post ahead!!)

It's always been a source of irritation to me that I've never got a good view of Mt Fuji. It's not through lack of trying. I've been to Hakone expressly to see Mt Fuji, only to go to the wrong place and run out of time to see it. I've been on the famous Kyoto-Tokyo shinkansen, which is supposed to have a great view of Fuji. Nothing. I even climbed the mountain, but it was so foggy and rainy that five minutes away from it, I couldn't see it at all.

Anyway, I was determined that before my time was up, I WOULD get a good view of Mt Fuji. The mountain is famously elusive; even on a slightly cloudy day, it is often completely obscured. You can be quite close to it and not see it at all. My impression of last spring, summer, and autumn, was that it seemed to be cloudy much more often than not. (That's one thing I miss about Australia. Pure sunshine...)

So I put my hopes on winter, and for the first time this weekend had a) a totally free Sunday with b) a picture of a sun on Google weather!

Woke up unnaturally early this morning and argued with myself as to whether I really wanted to make all the effort to go to Hakone... it's an hour and a half away, and then takes a *lot* of travelling to get around. Also, I wasn't sure I wanted to go by myself; Hakone was sure to be full of Tokyoites on day trips. It might be depressing travelling by myself. (When I first came to Japan, I always travelled by myself. But recently I've always done stuff with people, so I've gotten used to it.)

If I really wanted to see Mt Fuji, maybe I could go to the Five Lakes district instead. But a quick check told me that would take 2 1/2 hours to get *there*. (2 1/2 hours!! It takes less time to get to Kyoto!!) In comparison, Hakone sounded very attractive indeed, so off I went. After all, I told myself, if I stayed home watching Japanese dramas and playing DS games, it might be relaxing, but it wouldn't be a future memory.

I got a Hakone Free Pass, which gives you unlimited transport around Hakone for a set price. This saved a lot of hassles buying tickets, especially as my first mode of transport was a bus with those alarming 'creeping prices'. Some buses here - and I hate this - have fares that go up as the bus passes each stop, and your fare depends on the distance you travel. So if you get off after one stop, you pay 160 yen... after four you might pay 300... after ten, 700, etc...

The Hakone 'recommended course' goes like this:

Hakone-Yumoto to Gora (via Hakone-Tozen railway, a scenic but extremely slow train),

Gora to Sounzan (via a cablecar, which seems to stop every twenty seconds or so; walking would quite possibly be faster),

Sounzan to Togendai via Owakudani (via ropeway),

Togendai to Hakonemachi (via the sightseeing pirate ships!! on Lake Ashi)

Hakonemachi to Moto-Hakone-ko on foot

Moto-Hakone-ko to Hakone-Yumoto (via Hakone Tozan bus)

So you can see the course offers a lot of different types of transport. A quick look at the timetables revealed that all but the first two closed ridiculously early - seems like EVERYTHING in Hakone finishes before 4:30 - so I did the whole lot in reverse.

To the lake

I went to Lake Ashi on the Tozan bus. I get the idea that most of Hakone looks pretty similar. Which isn't to say the scenery is boring - it's not. There are so many mountains, and more trees than you can poke a stick at. Seriously, I don't know if I've ever seen so many trees anywhere before. In winter, when a lot of them are bare, it's not at its best, but it's still beautiful. I saw several hawks too.

I'd never been to this side of Hakone before and I really enjoyed the ride. As Google promised, the weather was fantastic. It was a 40-minute-ish bus ride past lots of whistle stops. (I think most of them corresponded to hot springs; Hakone is hot spring heaven.) Very relaxing, and actually, there weren't that many people around.

Once I hit Lake Ashi I had the real feeling of "I'm travelling again; I'm seeing things I've never seen". The lake was beautiful in the sunshine, and as I walked along the bank, I suddenly caught sight of a familiar white shape at the top of the hill...

Could it be... could it be... it was! And what a view!

It looks great in the pictures but seeing it in reality was amazing. Until that moment I'd been slightly on edge thinking 'what if the direction of the sun makes it unviewable by the time I get to see it; what if clouds suddenly come in'. Now that I had seen a brilliant view of it, I could relax.

Then I walked down to Hakonemachi through a pathway lined with cedars. I also went through the Hakone Checkpoint, a museum reconstructing the checkpoint which used to be part of the old Tokaido highway, with armed guards at the entrance, etc. Actually, I entered this museum unintentionally; it had an entrance fee, so I thought I'd walk around it, only to soon realise that I'd unwittingly entered the museum itself. Fortunately none of the ticket inspectors seemed very interested in me. I guess checkpoint security is not what it once was, hahaha.

Across the lake

From Hakonemachi I took one of the pirate ship boats across the lake. I was lucky enough to get a seat upstairs on the deck. I think most of the Japanese people thought it was too cold up there, because people kept coming up, sitting down, saying 'samui' and leaving again.

Unfortunately, a group of 'foreigners' (sorry, I call all white people foreigners now, it's a result of living here) were unbothered by the cold and acted like a bunch of 12-year-olds, dancing around (literally dancing a LOT) and making weird noises and generally creating a wide berth around them. I can't convey how embarassing they were.

While I was trying to ignore them, looking in the other direction, a Japanese boy about 10 years old said 'hello' to me. So I said hello and asked him his name (in English). "My name is Tetsuo," he said, and then we had a short conversation in Japanese and English. His mother asked me if the other foreigners were friends of mine and I said emphatically that I didn't know them; I was travelling alone. Hahaha...

Later, I was standing by the rail looking out at the lake, and Tetsuo found me again, and his eyes lit up. He called my name (with -san ^_^) and came to stand next to me. "Is it your first time on this boat?" he asked me in very clear, simple Japanese. (Adults rarely speak so clearly to me.) I said it was. He said it was his first time too. It's nice weather, isn't it, I said. Yes, and there are no clouds, he said. What are you doing after this? I asked him. I'm going home, he said. I'm going to Owakudani, I said.

It was a simple conversation but it put me in a good mood for the next hour. ^_^ He was such a nice boy. ^_^

Once we reached Togendai, I lined up for the ropeway. A few people behind me, the annoying foreigners came in. I started counting how many people were going in each car, hoping that I wouldn't be with them. Fortunately I was safe.

Owakudani

We took the ropeway up, and the scenery was beautiful. At this point the afternoon sun was low in the sky so half the hill was bright and orange; the other was half-hidden in glare. Mt Fuji was still huge and clearly visible in the sky as we climbed the hill.

Soon I saw Owakudani approaching. It's quite a sight. It's nicknamed 'hell valley' and it's a volcanic crater full of sulfuric activity. Very cool-looking.

The specialty of Owakudani are the eggs which are boiled in the natural hot water. These eggs are supposed to prolong your life by 7 years. Their shells turn black. Unfortunately, by the time I finished eating a laaate lunch (tempura and soba, mmm), the eggs were all sold out. So instead I ate a Kitty egg. Since cats have nine lives, I guess I've prolonged mine by 63 years.

I mentioned before that everything in Hakone closes crazy early. I thought I'd checked the timetables but when I returned to the ropeway at 4:30 I found it had finished 15 minutes earlier. Ummm. Great. I knew bus timetables also finished really early in that area, so I was slightly concerned about how I was going to get back to Hakone-Yumoto.

As I walked back outside I thought that in a worst-case scenario I could buy some kind of gift at the gift shop, ask some random Japanese families (who had cars) for a ride, and then give them the gift at the end. This kind of request would be even more unusual in Japan than in Australia - people here very rarely ask strangers for favours. Fortunately I didn't have to try it out, as there was a bus to Sounzan (unfortunately not covered by my free pass, so that was some wasted money...).

Back home

From Owakudani it was a long stretch back home. Ten minutes to Sounzan. Ten minutes on the cable car; 40 minutes on the train to Hakone-Yumoto; 15 minutes on another train to Odawara, then an hour and a half home. Not to mention all the waiting times. Yeah, Hakone is not really a convenient place to just drop by. For all the return journey it was dark and I was just knackered.

The girl sitting opposite me on the train to Hakone-Yumoto was wearing an elaborate kimono. I assumed she'd been to a wedding or something. I think it was the kind of kimono called 'furisode', and it had very long, thick, dangling sleeves. It was interesting to watch her sit down. She couldn't just sit; she had to carefully adjust herself, and then arrange one sleeve to hang carefully over her lap, then the other sleeve. Throughout the journey she was continually, subtly checking her kimono's status out; adjusting bits and pieces, tugging at the obi in the middle, etc.

When I was waiting in Gora, I remembered the last time I went there. It was 3 years ago, with Yan. It was as far as we got in Hakone, and I remember resenting it for not having a view of Mt Fuji. Really, there is nothing there, just as I remembered.

Hakone is a very Japanese place. I remember thinking that the first time I went there. Its most popular activity is its hot springs. It's full of tea houses and places selling amazake (sweet sake), Japanese architecture, omiyage and countless bits and pieces of local history and culture. But this time the Japanese-ness of it was less mysterious than before. I could some of the food, some of the omiyage, some of the signs.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Progress, progress

2009-02-05T05:54:00.000-08:00

My neighbourhood seems to be very much under construction these days. I may've mentioned the new apartment building being built next to mine. And I mean RIGHT next to mine. The work seems to be roughly at ear level, too. This morning it was drilling.

But that building's not all; in the last two or three weeks I've seen the closure of several shops I walked past every day; shops that've been there since I first came; shops I've never been in and rarely seen any customers in. I feel that way about most of the shops and restaurants in my suburb - how can they make a living? I guess some of them can't.

Most notable was the convenience store (admittedly, there had been three convenience stores within 250m of each other), which not only closed, but was demolished and razed to the ground. Now it's a big empty lot, nothing but flat, perfectly smooth gravel. I wonder what will appear there??

***

Speaking of progress, I'm still loving the renovated Kawasaki BE (department store). The basement level is one big food hall and oh! Beard Papa's cream puffs are GREAT.

Krispy Kreme donuts is my pick though. (Japanese people call them 'Krispy donuts'.) Today I went there for the first time. Usually Murphy's Law operates - when I want to go and buy donuts, there's far too long a line; when I'm in a bit of a hurry and don't have time, there's almost nobody. But today the stars aligned and the line was only a dozen people.

It's a fairly small store but well organised against the crowds. While waiting in line, someone is on hand to pass out menus and - oh glee! - a free glazed donut. I thought they only did that when the line was really long, to keep the customers sweet.

This donut was warm and fresh from the oven, mmm.... sadly for them I'd been in the middle of tossing up whether to get one or two glazed donuts, and getting a free one kind of clinched the deal. Generally though, in Japan, it's probably a safe sales strategy. As I've mentioned before, Japanese people tend not to buy just one or two individual snacks, but whole boxes of them.

Anyway, they also have staff taking your order both at the counter and in the line, and then giving you a register number - there are five cash registers. Every staff member is manically busy all the time. I feel bad for them...

Disney Sea

2009-02-02T06:17:00.000-08:00

Today I went to Disney Sea with Yumi (my head teacher). It was a great day! It got a bit cold after dark, but the day was sunny and clear.

Now, Tokyo has two Disney theme parks, right near each other: Disney Land and Disney Sea. Let me tell you, there is definitely a market for two Disney parks. Disney is hugely popular here, and on the weekends there are always hordes of people. Accordingly, we went on Monday, and it generally wasn't bad (though a couple of rides perpetually had 90 minute waits, this is still nothing compared to peak times!).

Anyway, Disney Sea is quite different from the traditional Disney Land. Two of the 'lands' are overtly Disney - one themed on The Little Mermaid (and it was amazing!!!) and the other on Aladdin (also really cool!). The other lands are various water-based places - a land themed to look like Venice, one like old-style New York, one like a mysterious island, etc.

The best thing about Disney parks is that as soon as you get there, you feel like a kid again.

I ate a lot of food and went on a few rollercoasters and lots of other rides. We rode on gondolas, went 20,000 leagues under the sea, survived the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, passed through the eye of a storm, and various other adventures. Indiana Jones was probably my favourite ride. We got our photos taken with Aladdin, who surprised me by being American and greeting us in perfect, American English. Hahaha...

We also got to see several shows, including an amazing big band cabaret show, and an equally amazing fantasy show on the lake involving loads of enormous decorated boats, dancers, kites, fountains, Disney characters, and fireworks. If you've never been to a Disney park before, it's hard to believe how lavish it can all be. No expense is spared, it seems.

The strangest show was one we accidentally happened upon in Aladdin's world. Imagine you are in an Arabic-themed 'town'. A bunch of Japanese guys in shiny Arabic clothes are playing a face-shredding 'Smoke on the water' interspersed with 'Prince Ali' (from Aladdin). A bunch of cute Japanese girls in harem-y clothes have brought some guys up from the audience, given them random implements, and told them to play air guitar along to the music. So one guy is 'playing' a sword, another is playing a lamp, and the third is playing a rug. The girls are belly-dancing, and the Japanese dudes are playing electric guitar with a Middle Eastern wail. Very surreal.

At the end I bought 'omiyage' (souvenir gifts) for my co-worker whose birthday it was recently. Now, Disney did a very wise thing coming to Japan. Nobody buys merchandise like the Japanese do. You get a combination of the 'omiyage' culture (where everyone has to buy gifts for their co-workers, friends, family, dog, etc), and a 'willing to buy anything as long as it's vaguely cute' culture, and it must be very lucrative indeed.

It never ceased to astonish me (and I have lived in Japan over a year!) just how many people were walking around wearing Mickey (or other character) ears, hats, bows, etc; walking around with popcorn buckets around their neck, carrying Disney bags, etc.... even so many guys wearing Stitch heads or Genie hats or whatever...

Japanese girls are the main target. And it's Valentine's Day soon, so there were loads of Valentine's-y souvenirs, for example matching Minnie and Mickey toys/keychains/t-shirts/handkerchiefs/etc where you buy the 'set' and each member of the couple keeps one of them. I think a lot of men were forced to accept Mickey paraphernalia today.

I admit though, the main Valentine's image they used was so cute even I bought a little photo album with the picture on it... cast ye not stones... hahah...

Speaking of Disney Land, I have one student, a girl about 20, who goes every week. I'm not kidding. Every week. She has a yearly pass. She has been there at least 40 times. I know!!

Anyway it was a grand day and I very much enjoyed Yumi's company. I may post a few pictures on my web album this week. (By the way, I updated it a few days ago. If you don't have my album's address, please email me. I don't want it to be public though. ^_^)

...ugokanai...

2009-01-28T07:23:00.000-08:00

Bleagh... I just got home after an hour and a half on a stationary train. Not sure quite what happened there. If I knew it'd take so long I'd've probably taken a taxi home from the station I was stuck at. But I was studying Japanese for a while, and I had a seat, so I didn't really care for the first hour. The guy next to me fell asleep and started snoring.

At around midnight I finally got fed up and left, but I didn't have change for a taxi, so was looking for some random item to buy at the convenience store when I heard an announcement from the station, and ran back in to catch the train leaving.

I did get to see a rare sight - a Japanese person losing their rag. Some guy suddenly jumped up from his seat, marched over to the train driver's window and started bellowing insults and a 'what the **** do you ****s think you're doing?!' type of tirade for a full five minutes. And I mean BELLOWING. Most of the other passengers looked kind of shifty-eyed and pretended not to be paying attention.

Ice skating

2009-01-26T04:40:00.000-08:00

Today I went down to Minato Mirai (the Yokohama harbour area). We (five of us) went ice skating at an outdoor rink. It was really fantastic. It was outside Akarenga (the Red Brick Warehouse). When we got there it was still light, but we got to watch the sunset and then see all the night lights, as we skated.

It was really fun skating outside in the open air too; I've never done that before. And seeing all the amazing buildings of Yokohama by twilight... It was something I've wanted to do for ages!

After the skating we went to TGI Fridays, and had an enoooormous amount of food. ^_^

A nice day, in all. ^_^

January 26

2009-01-25T09:09:00.000-08:00

Happy Australia Day! ^_^

This day last year I gave Tim Tams to all my students. This year, it's a Monday, so I have the day off.

Down the harbour

2009-01-25T03:38:00.000-08:00

I've been sick all week and last weekend. Possibly it was the flu; I had some cold-like symptoms but also fatigue, acheyness and muscle pain. I didn't miss any work. I'm just starting to come good again now, apart from still having a clogged up throat.

Today I went down to the harbour. It was a nice, clear, sunny, winter day and it felt good to be out again, after spending the whole last weekend in bed.

For the first time I went to Rinko Park, behind the Intercontinental Yokohama Hotel. It was nothing special as parks go, though it really is *right* on the waterfront. You could quite easily lean over and reach out and touch the sea. It was a very functional park. There were loads of people with dogs, dads chasing their kids, children practising baseball, a dude practising juggling... The buildings around there are really stunning.

Tomorrow I'm going back down that way. There's a temporary open-air ice skating rink at the Red Brick Warehouse and I'm going there with Pete and Jess. I've never been ice skating at an open-air rink before.

I've been here quite a while now but there are still so many things I want to do! I want to go up north before the end of the snow season, and go snowboarding. I want to stay at an onsen on the Izu peninsula. I want to go to Hakone on a really clear winter day and see a GOOD view of Mt Fuji at least once! I want to go to a jpop or jrock concert. I want to go to the Studio Ghibli museum, and Disney Sea, and the beer garden at Ebisu, and many other places besides. There are so many places even around Tokyo and Yokohama and Kawasaki that I've never visited.

***

Work is going okay (though I hate working when I'm sick -_-). I have some really excellent, hard-working students. Actually I'm beginning to respect them all the more, especially the ones who've been studying for two or three years.

Truthfully, I'm starting to get really lazy with my Japanese. I'm less motivated to study, and I've already forgotten heaps of vocabulary. I felt really bad for my Japanese teacher when I had my first class after coming back from Australia. At one point in the lesson I had to ask her how to say 'last week'. Very shameful... -_-

To everything, its own use

2009-01-15T06:32:00.000-08:00

I was just reading this book called 'Bringing Home the Sushi', by Mark Meers. In it, he comments:
Japanese housewives, for example, have a propensity for "using certain things only for certain purposes". A person wouldn't consider using a coffee cup for tea, or a tea cup for coffee. I don't mean usually, I mean never. You use chopsticks to eat Japanese food, but specifically don't use them if you're eating "foreign food".
...
You also don't use "eating" chopsticks in place of "serving" chopsticks, or kitchen curtains for living room curtains, or wicker baskets to put magazines in.

This made me think of three things:

One day, Pete was in a restaurant, eating some kind of meat and rice dish. As usual, the meat and rice were served in different, little bowls. So Pete put the meat on the rice and ate them together. A girl at the next table - a stranger - remarked 'wow, that's so interesting, Japanese people would never think to mix the meat and rice like that'. (She wasn't criticising him, just expressing surprise.) 

You Should Never Use The Wrong Sauce. If you eat out with Japanese people, you will quickly learn that Certain Foods have Certain Sauces. If you start to use the 'wrong one', people will call out, with urgency, 'no! no! Not that one!!!' To again use Pete as an example, he often protests 'but it's delicious!' and experiment with different dishes and different sauces. No Japanese person would ever do this. 

Japanese people have occasionally expressed surprise to see me or Pete wearing short sleeves in late autumn or winter. Even if we're inside and it's like 28 degrees inside (as it often is; a lot of indoor places are really overheated). "Aren't you cold?!" they'll say. But... it's not cold INSIDE... it's so hot we're sweating... yet the stifling trains are full of people fully bundled up in coats, scarves, etc. There seem to be unwritten rules for when and where you don or take off coats, and seasonal rules for whether you wear short or long sleeves, which are not related to the physiological consideration of 'am I feeling hot/cold?'

Cold

2009-01-08T18:27:00.001-08:00

No snow. :( Just rain, and 4 degrees. -_-

It's a new year

2009-01-08T07:52:00.000-08:00

So I'm back in Japan, and I am told there's a strong likelihood of SNOW tomorrow. This is great.

Right now it's omiyage (souvenir) season with a vengeance. In Japan it's very common, when you've been on a trip, to buy souvenir gifts for your co-workers or friends back home. Also, it being the New Year, it's a prime season for giving gifts. Our staff room is overflowing with ice cream, various Japanese sweets, pudding cookies, my chocolates from Hahndorf, castella cakes, and so on... it is not a time for diets, so it's a good thing I'm not into New Year's resolutions.

***

I think I've mentioned before that in Japanese stores and restaurants, when you hear an instrumental version of 'Auld Lang Syne', it's time to get out. Stores play this tune (in Japanese, 'Hotaru no hikari', or 'Light of the firefly') to tell you they're about to close. It continues playing until the last customer is gone.

Personally, while I think it's a delicate way to get your customers out on time without having to turn off the lights, I dislike it. Henceforth, the sweet and nostalgic air of 'Auld Lang Syne' shall be synonymous in my mind with 'get out! get out!'.

Pete thought it was pretty funny today when I revealed that we have a dedicated 'Hotaru no hikari' radio station at work. That's right, channel 80 plays nothing but the ponderous strains of 'Auld Lang Syne', on loop, forever and ever.

***

I recently learned via this blog that in Japan, your first dream of the year foretokens the kind of year you will have. In particular, there are three lucky symbols - an eggplant, a hawk, and Mt Fuji. If one of these appears in your first dream, you're in for a lucky year.

I just find the randomness of those three items vastly amusing. I don't know who decided that an eggplant was a lucky object, but probably someone who really likes moussaka.

Back!

2009-01-04T04:05:00.001-08:00

I'm back in my apartment in Japan, having just finished my gyoza and fried rice. I don't have much to say and shall be going to bed rather soon, but just thought I'd post to say I got back safely and without incident. ^_^

Stopover in Brissie was fine after all, they have this great coach service which delivers you to your hostel door, don't even need a booking far in advance, and they picked me up at 6:20am the next morning too!

I came back hauling even more stuff (I think) than when I first arrived in the country and it took me close to three hours to get home. (They say they are building a new express train line from the airport into Tokyo. That will be good and all, but the current problem with all the faster options now are that they are *expensive*.)

I have a tonne of omiyage (souvenir gifts), clothes that were gathering dust in Australia, books (I'm sad to say I did buy more books in Brisbane), and some missed snacks. I also brought a wombat. It was an unnecessary expense at Brisbane airport but I was quite reckless and had some Australian dollars to dispose of. According to his tag, his name is Russell. I plan to put Russell in my classroom. Russell is very, very cute.

I felt a little sad leaving but I also felt glad to be back, which was a relief. I was worried I might have mixed feelings after having such a great trip and rediscovering how much I loved Australia. But I think I'm lucky to have two homes, two countries that I really like. It is about 8 degrees here at the moment, so a bit nippy.

I had a really excellent holiday and it was great to catch up with you all! Especially, thanks to my parents and my sister for letting me stay with them and for all your help with everything. Thanks to my friends too who were very kind to me too. I hope you all have a very happy new year. ^_^

Back home

2008-12-24T06:42:00.000-08:00

I'm back in Australia for the first time in over a year. It certainly felt strange and it took me a couple of days to get used to everything again.

For example, looking out the window of the plane as we arrived at Sydney airport, I realised I was unconsciously looking for Mt Fuji. (Whenever I'm on a train and it's a clear day I look for Mt Fuji.) When I was near a train and the ground shook, I thought it was an earthquake. (Actually I felt a long earthquake while teaching on Saturday night. It went for a full minute.)

I walked off the plane, yawning, and a couple of techies in the overpass grinned at me and said "that bad, was it?" in the Aussie-est accent I'd heard all year. I felt weird in the airport too - suddenly I felt short, and I no longer felt slightly overweight. I thought Aussies seemed really tall and tanned and untidy - everyone was in such casual clothes, and people were randomly dumping suitcases on the floor, rifling through things, getting in each others' way. In Japan, everything and everyone is very orderly and neat and self-contained.

While waiting in line I exchanged a few words with the lady in front of me (we'd both been out the country for a while and we'd just heard the word 'g'day' from someone in the next line). I said only two sentences and she said 'you've got an American accent'. I think I've already mostly lost it again though.

I went to the bathroom and expected the toilet to flush itself (that's one thing I don't miss; auto-flushing toilets always irritate me). I went through Customs and one of the Customs guy was chatting cheerily to a customer; I overheard him say 'that's bloody sensational!' I overheard another Customs guy calling a customer 'mate'. I felt happy.

And when I went outside, I realised for the first time that Australia has a smell. A fresh, earthy smell; I'd never noticed it especially before. Even the air felt different from Japan.

I realised just how ocker and casual most Australians are. Even the clothes of people around me surprised me. Most Japanese people are so well-presented, I feel like most Aussies look like they're dressed for the beach. Even store keepers are more friendly and open. In Japan, store clerks are very courteous and polite, and there's this feeling that they are there to really serve the customer; the customer and clerk are not on an equal level.

But in Australia the status is the same, so people will more freely chat to store clerks, and staff will joke or say friendly things. I went into one store and the clerk was telling us how manic it was at Christmas and how they'd had some nasty customers that week; another store and they told us a particular product wasn't that great, another was exchanging banter with the customer she was serving. You'd never hear this level of casualness or realness from Japanese clerks. I had it it in my mind that Japan's customer service was much better than Adelaide's, and I guess it is faster and more efficient, but actually Adelaide's waiters and clerks are much friendlier than I remembered.

Aussie people, too, are really open and friendly. I notice it after Japan. Japanese people are lovely; I really like them immensely, but I do miss being able to speak English to people, and freely chat to or ask questions of anyone I see. And Japanese people do tend to be more reserved and contained; loads of people wearing business suits, walking in silence through train stations; people are very considerate but not usually gregarious like Aussies. Australians seem much more relaxed, human, themselves.

I also realised how much I miss Aussie food. Adelaide's food is really, really good. I realise again that I don't like Japanese food *that* much. Sure, I've grown used to it; I've found plenty of things I like, but often in Japan it's a case of 'hmm, this doesn't look *too* bad, I guess I can eat this'. It's not the same as going to any restaurant and having at least a dozen things on the menu that make you go 'oooh, I reaaaally want this!!'

In particular I miss Australian bread and rolls, I miss good Australian pasta, and Greek food, and pub/cafe meals (fish and chips, gourmet burgers, salt and pepper squid, etc).

I've been feeling lucky to be back but also kind of appraising things - do I want to return here, etc. The pace of life feels much slower and more relaxed here. The weather is amazing. I miss Australian weather too! And I felt so free, driving around. It's nice to feel like you can go anywhere, when you have a car; and the sky stretches across forever, and there's so much SPACE.

It's also been good seeing everyone again.

But I don't quite have the feeling of being home...

Sushi Heaven

2008-12-14T22:09:00.001-08:00

Months ago I saw a Japanese comedy called 'Water Boys'. In one scene, the boys are working as cleaners at an aquarium. As they clean the glass of the tank, they fantasise about how all the different animals in the tank would make delicious sushi...

At the time I thought this was very funny. Then yesterday I went to Ikebukuro's aquarium with a Japanese friend. A lot of the tanks had Christmas decorations in them. We even saw Santa feeding the manta rays. This is one of the strangest things I have ever seen. And I live in Japan!

As I mentioned, I went with a Japanese friend, who kept commenting on the potential edibility of each display.
'Oh, looks delicious...'
'Not much meat on these ones...'
'Looks tough to eat...'

I thought this was pretty funny, until I overheard snippets of conversation from various Japanese people around us and realised that everyone around us was saying the same thing!!!

No Smorking

2008-12-13T07:22:00.001-08:00

Every time I see the sign at Tully's Coffee that says 'No Smorking', it makes me smile.

I don't want to smork anyway.

Culture - bits and pieces

2008-12-12T05:27:00.000-08:00

I've been here over a year now, and I still don't think I know Japan that well. It's because I don't speak the language; I'm not really immersed in the way people actually think and express themselves. I do learn a lot through hearsay and reading books and blogs. But there are lots of things that are visible to me, and most of them I now take for granted and don't really notice. Yet it certainly is different to Australia, so I thought I'd try to think of some examples.

If I repeat myself, sorry... sometimes I don't remember what I've written in the past.

***

Buying food

I was reading a book ("Welcome to Sawanoya") by an old Japanese guy who ran an inn where lots of foreigners stayed. He writes:
'One day, a neighbor who runs a sweets shop related the following story: "Sawa-san, your customers come to my shop asking to buy one piece of sembei [crackers] or one manju [a type of sweet]. That sounds rather strange to me, but I'm happy to sell treats by the piece to these people who've come all the way from abroad.' No Japanese would by such small quantities nowadays, as they naturally expect to buy an entire package.

I had never heard such a sentiment from a Japanese point of view before. To me it seems completely natural to go to a store and buy a single, very small snack. I have also bought a single rice cracker or whatever (rice crackers are bigger here). But I realise it is unusual. Today I went to 36 Sticks. They sell little thin cakes and desserts (36 different kinds). I bought a cheesecake stick. It was nice, and at 180yen, a nice cheap snack. While I was there, someone next to me was selecting several; another seemed to be ordered a whole cake, rather than a stick.

I remember my sister observing, when she was here, that when she bought an item in a bakery, everyone around her was ladening their trays with stuff. This is very true, actually. I often only buy one bakery item (bakeries here specialise less in loaves of bread, more in little snack items like croissants, curry bread, melon bread, little sandwiches, pizzas, etc etc). But I've very, very rarely seen a Japanese customer with only one item on their tray.

My sister also observed, when she went to the mini croissant shop, that while she bought a couple of mini croissants, all the people before her were getting at least 10 or 20, and most customers were getting several bags of croissants. This is also true. When I go there I usually get 100g (4 or 5 minis) and I still feel like I'm ordering a ridiculously tiny amount.

Sometimes I do feel funny about buying only one of an item, if only because packaging here often entails some effort, and I feel rather sad for the staff wrapping and putting my single bread roll in multiple bags. (I suppose I feel more sorry for them when they are individually wrapping each of fifteen bakery items in individual plastic bags, even if they are killing the environment.)

For example, if you buy any kind of fresh dessert, you will usually be asked 'how many hours until you return home?' Your answer will determine how many little ice packages they put in your box.

I do wonder, though, what people do with all that stuff. Sure, a lot of people are buying for families, a lot of people are buying gifts, and a lot of people buy for their offices or meetings, but surely some people must buy for themselves?! What do they DO with all these items?!

***

Anthrax scare

Okay, no anthrax scare. But that's what some foreigners think when they first see Japanese people wearing white surgical masks over their nose and mouth. Usually there's one of two reasons for it:

the person has an allergy and is trying to protect themselves against breathing in allergens;
the person has a cold and is trying to protect the populace from their own germs

As a result, you see a lot of masks in winter (cold season) and spring (hayfever season). Large numbers of people seem to suffer allergies. It's astonishing. For months people are mostly fine, then suddenly half your students are answering 'so-so' when you ask 'how are you', and looking red-eyed.

My own opinion is that a lot of the masks are quite unnecessary, and probably have a detrimental effect on your health as you spend all day breathing in your own germs. However, I have to say, I did cave in and wear my first face mask last week, while riding the trains.

I have had colds before and not worn them (as a teacher, it's not good to wear one anyone, though many people do wear them all day at work). But last week I had a cough, and a somewhat nasty one, and I didn't want to share it with all the passengers nearby. I have to concede, the masks can be socially responsible when you see how crowded the trains are.

***

People do bow a lot. Various store clerks bow to show politeness; people bow when they meet; people bow at the end of the day saying goodbye to each other; people bow to apologise, etc. At my job, the Japanese staff sometimes bow to students or potential students.

As a foreigner I don't bow and it doesn't feel natural to me - I've only done it three or four times. I have developed what I call the 'chicken jerk', where you kind of bob your head briefly like a chicken pecking... hahah... I'm not the only foreigner to pick up this habit. I do the nod a lot in a day - when I walk past someone who works in the same building as me, when I leave a store, when I meet someone or say goodbye to them, etc.

Store clerks do it in varying degrees; I was amused when my sister came and entered a particularly exclusive department store (I've been to a different branch of it so I can confirm), and was a bit bemused to find that wherever she walked, she was following a gauntlet of staff who would bow as she passed. It's kind of unsettling to have a whole line of people, bowing one after the other, as you walk down the corridor.

Though I see bowing a lot, I am often amused at the train station on Friday or Saturday nights, when hordes of businessmen who've been out drinking together, are saying goodbye. There's always a constant series of bows - one person bows, the other bows, the first person has to bow again, then the second... I don't know the unwritten rule for when you can politely break the cycle and actually leave. You'll see these little knots of people all standing in a circle and bowing to each other. It always makes me smile.

Bowing is such an intrinsic part of communication here that they even put it on signs. For example, if there's a sign saying 'construction work - sorry for the inconvenience', it will often be accompanied by a cartoon picture of a construction worker bowing apologetically. Or, if you go to a ticket machine at the train station, a picture of a woman will bow and say 'irrashaimase' (welcome - they say this in stores), before presenting you with your choices.

Teaching kids

2008-12-11T06:47:00.001-08:00

[By the way, I've mentioned before that I never use people's real names on this blog, so that co-workers and students will be less likely to find it. But I haven't yet made up a name for myself. So I'll call myself... Anne. ^_^]

So, teaching kids... I've complained about it; my three kids' classes take more preparatory work than all my adult classes combined. My little kids (aged 2-3) can be challenging. I have four of them, and sometimes running the class is like herding cats. I'm not very good at getting all of them to pay attention to one thing at the same time. But there are some good things about teaching kids, and sometimes they are just cute.

The kids often mimic what I say and do. The other day, all my little kids started giving the thumbs-up (a bad habit of mine) and saying 'good!'

One mum said her daughter, 3-year-old Mina, would get excited the day before class and say 'tomorrow I'm going to Anne-sensei's class!!'

One little boy's mum said that since he started taking my class, whenever he sees a foreign person on the street, he calls out 'hello!!'

When I come up to the lobby where my little kids are waiting, they all run up to me and give me things (whatever toy they're holding, etc). The other day, Mina called 'Anne-sensei!!' when I appeared. It's the first time a little kid has called me by my name. ^_^

Sometimes I get excited about their minor breakthroughs. For example, I'm always saying colours to them when we're colouring in. But usually they don't seem to notice. Suddenly, last week, the boy started identifying crayon colours (in English) without prompting. I was so proud!

Most of the kids will spontaneously break into song at some point during the lesson. (Songs in English, that is.)

My older kids are sweet too. Last week my 9-year-old gave me a Christmas card. She wrote:
To Anne: I Love Anne from Ayu

Last week I was sick and my oldest kid's class was cancelled. I taught her today. I left the room a few moments before she did. Later, when I went back to clean up the room, I saw she'd secretly left a letter on the desk. It was addressed to 'Anne teacher' and it was a cute little note, in English and Japanese, saying she hoped I was feeling better and I should take care of myself. So sweet! I went around showing everyone because it was such a cute note.

It made me realise that teaching kids does have some rewards after all.

Updates

2008-12-07T17:52:00.000-08:00

11am and it's 7 degrees outside... iya da... :(

I was sick for about two weeks but am feeling pretty well better now. I even took a day off work, which I've not done before.

Yesterday was my big Japanese Proficiency Test. I think I did quite well. I'm fairly sure I at least passed. But I'm a perfectionist and I want to get a Good Score...

I got my visa updated. (Pain... -_-). Today I have to go to the ward office. I get sick of all this... the annoying thing is they only gave me a 1-year visa, so if I *do* decide to stay longer, I'll have to go back to immigration *again*... Other people at this company have gotten 3-year visas, and we specifically requested one. But I heard it's pretty well random which one they give you... oh well...

This is a grand time of year, with lots of parties. A lot of companies have big 'bonenkai' (year-end parties). Our school's gonna have a big Christmas party. I'm hoping for a karaoke after-party, personally. Next week we're gonna have a couple of get-togethers because Jim, my old co-worker, is back in Japan for a couple of weeks! ^_^ On Saturday I'm going to a party with a co-worker, so that's three parties next week, hahaha. Unfortunately I missed our building's Christmas party - I was really looking forward to it too -_- - because I was sick.

I really love living in a big metropolis. You can finish work, and walk outside, and you've got loads of restaurants and bars to choose from. It makes socialising so easy. Or, any weekend you can go into Tokyo or somewhere, where it's all happening. Also, I think karaoke makes a really nice addition to socialising choices. After you've finished dinner, sometimes you don't want to spend the whole night in a bar or club.

Japanese food

2008-12-04T06:06:00.000-08:00

It occurred to me that when I write about Japanese food in this blog, I tend to give a lot more press to the Japanese food I have not enjoyed. That is probably because it is more fun to report whatever latest monstrosity I have consumed, and sounds more impressive.

That said, there is a lot of food I like here too, both Japanese and international. I am not always eating horrible things. In my first three months or so, I was always trying new things, just to see what they were like. Now, if a variety of dishes are on the table, I don't feel any need to try them all. I established there are several things I Just Don't Like (offal, fatty meat, most sashimi, wasabi, pickles, and all Japanese sweets) so now I'm rarely in a situation where I need to eat them.

Basashi (raw horse)

Actually, Japanese people are great foodies, and I've actually become quite astonished to realise how many different types of Japanese food there are. In Australia I tended to think of Japan as having Japanese food - perhaps twenty or thirty main dishes that comprised their national cuisine. But no, there are dozens of styles of cuisine, and many, many thousands of specific dishes.

What's more, each area has its own specialties, regional varieties, favoured ingredients and special cooking styles, and each season has its preferred dishes or ingredients. Japan's also famous for presenting its food with care.

As an example, I went to Nagano a couple of weeks ago, and ate oyaki (a kind of fried little vegetable pancakey thing), a Nagano specialty. We also had rice with chestnuts, since that area of Nagano was famous for chestnuts. There are apples for sale everywhere as souvenirs, as Nagano is also famous for apples. Nagano is also famous for grapes, and there were lots of other various special foods I didn't recognise or understand.

We tried some vegetable that 'is very rare and grows in this area'. We had mushrooms because they were in season. We had apple wine. While we were eating, downstairs, hordes of people were buying Japanese 'omiyage' (souvenir) sweets specific to that town. On the train on the way back we got a very famous type of 'ekiben' (train lunch box) called 'kamameshi', these ekiben are unique to specific train stations - ours was rice topped with seasonal vegetables in a ceramic bowl.

Kamameshi ekiben

(These ekiben are a perfect example of how staggeringly large Japan's food culture seems to be. I mean, there are so many types, some of which are famous; there are even ekiben aficionados who will go around eating as many different ekiben as they can... Just check out this website. This is the Kanto area (around Tokyo) alone!! If you click on any of the starred links it will show you that place's ekiben.)

Specialised restaurants

If you are going to eat out in Japan, a lot of restaurants specialise in a particular cooking style. You can find restaurants that serve lots of different types of food, but they're less common.

Shabu-shabu (hot pot)

You might go to an okonomiyaki restaurant, for example, where you can make okonomiyaki (fried vegetable pancakes with various constituents), yakisoba (fried noodles with vegetables) or monjayaki (a lame, watery version of okonomiyaki) on the hot plate at your table.

Or you might go to a soba, udon or ramen restaurant. These different types of noodles (mostly like a big bowl of soup with noodles and various other bits and pieces) are popular as fast food too. There are a lot of small soba/udon/ramen places around train stations, where patrons stand to eat, and you'd be astonished how fast a salaryman can scarf down a huge bowl of noodles. No wonder some of the world champion eaters have come from Japan...

Soba

There are sushi and sashimi restaurants, tonkatsu (fried breaded pork cutlets, often other fried breaded meats too) restaurants, horumon (offal) restaurants, shabu-shabu or sukiyaki (hotpot) restaurants, Okinawan restaurants...

Okinawan food

Virtually every department store building has a 'restaurant floor', full of lots of these little restaurants.

There are also 'izakaya', which I've mentioned before. They're friendly, casual eating places with a small cover charge, people go there to drink and eat lots of shared dishes, various things including deep-fried chicken, sashimi, takoyaki (octopus balls), tempura, nabe, edamame (soy beans in their pod; a common finger food snack here), yakitori (grilled chicken), etc. These places are a good choice for large groups.

Renewal

2008-11-27T08:26:00.001-08:00

Incidentally, just to keep you posted, I did renew for another three months. Which would mean I'm due to finish in August.
However, I realised my offer said that if I renew for "less than 3 months" I won't get a re-offer; but I am renewing for 3. This means I may well get another contract offer next year.
If they do offer me another, well, it will be nice to be able to keep my options open. Also, it would be nice to be able to make a decision *after* going back to Australia for a visit. My feelings (as to whether I want to leave or stay) tend to vary with the weeks. Right now I'm very happy with everything.
If they don't offer me another, well, at least I don't have to spend weeks agonising over a decision again. ^_^

Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T08:18:00.000-08:00

Today (well, yesterday - it's now 1:20am) was Thanksgiving Day. American Thanksgiving, anyway. (And come to think of it, I suppose it's still Thanksgiving Day in America, due to the time difference.)

Anyway, it was my first time to celebrate Thanksgiving. A bunch of us - mostly teachers from various schools, and a few friends of friends - met at the Hard Rock Cafe in Roppongi. I'd never been to a Hard Rock cafe before. We had a turkey dinner with cranberry sauce (admittedly, the turkey and vegetables came served with rice. It seemed somehow a fitting blend of cultures...)

We were quite an international group. There were ten of us, including 2 Aussies, 1 Pom, 2 Canadians, 1 Japanese guy, and 4 Americans.

We went around the table and said what we were thankful for.

Actually, I am thankful for a lot of things. I'm thankful to be here, in Japan. I'm thankful for a job I mostly like. I'm thankful for really nice co-workers. I'm thankful I'm starting to make more friends. I'm thankful for my social life - it's actually been really good the last few months. I get to do lots of interesting things; it seems like every weekend I'm having a blast.

I'm thankful for my friends back home. I'm thankful for my family, who are great. I'm thankful I can go to Australia next month and see everyone (thanks Mum and Dad!). I'm thankful I can enjoy my life so much and there are so many nice people around me everywhere.

Weird sickness

2008-11-25T07:09:00.001-08:00

I'm slightly sick but I've never experienced this before.

So, on Saturday I woke up feeling nauseous, threw up a few times before going to work. Worked a full day, felt nauseous for some of it. Had many moments of feeling extremely strange, kind of feverish. In one class I thought I was going to faint.
Felt totally normal Sunday and Monday.

Tuesday, I mostly felt normal but this evening started getting some weird symptoms again and again with the dizziness/nausea and strange feelings.

By strange feelings, I mean... well, you know when you have a fever, and you think in a strange way? For example, you get one particular thought or idea stuck in your head, and you can't get it out? Or you remember - or think you remember - some long-forgotten event or story you once read, and it seems incredibly important and profound, and yet you had no memory of it before you got the fever?

On Saturday the weird thing was deja vu. I had indeed taught all those lessons before, but I felt extremely acute deja vu. I actually felt as if I had already experienced everything on that day - I heard the exact same questions, I replied using exactly the same words, we went onto exactly the same tangents, students made exactly the same points. Even when I talked to a staff member about a student report, I felt as if we'd had an identical discussion - right down to the exact sentences we were using - a few weeks earlier.

Apart from sudden attacks of nausea and dizziness, which have never lasted more than a few minutes, I've felt fine apart from moments of slight headache or sore throat. Today I again had a couple of moments of panic where I felt so dizzy that I wondered if I was going to throw up or have to lie down on the street.

Any thoughts on this? I'd peg it down to some kind of weird virus and a touch of fever, but it seems very strange to me that I should feel totally fine on the weekend and then sick before and after it. Right now I feel pretty normal except for a very slight headache.

I had an awesome weekend, incidentally. I must post about it soon. ^_^

Fujisan ga mieru

2008-11-20T07:12:00.000-08:00

The last day or two, it started to get really cold (again). Right now it's about 7 outside. It will get worse in winter, of course, but for November, it's cold enough!!

However, the cold weather has brought really clear, crisp skies. Two of my students today told me they could see Mt Fuji this morning.

I think I've mentioned this before - all around Tokyo and Kanagawa, where I live, on a sufficiently clear day, you can actually see Mt Fuji from any vantage point if it's high enough, or if there aren't many tall buildings around. For example, I can see Mt Fuji from the train to my Japanese teacher's house. However, I haven't seen it since last winter. I realised that the entire last 8 months have been mostly cloudy or hazy. Ironically, even when I *climbed* Mt Fuji, I couldn't see it until I was actually on it. Even driving away from it, five minutes away from it and it was so cloudy and foggy I couldn't see it! And it's a big mountain!!

So it's nice to have such clear blue skies again, even if everyone is rugged up in enough clothes to go to Antarctica...

***

Oh, I forgot to mention it here but my co-workers gave me a surprise birthday party last week! I was really touched. :) A couple of students also gave me gifts (most people didn't know it was my birthday though). I have some chocolates from Godiva here, lucky me. ^_^ My co-workers cooked for me, and we had oyakodon, ratatouille, and some other things, including shiitake mushrooms... I already enthused about shiitake mushrooms a couple of weeks ago, but these were stuffed with mince meat and negi. I liked them so much I tried making them myself last night. Really good!!

My coworkers - and other people around me - are so nice.

Seafood

2008-11-15T07:25:00.000-08:00

My day started with an upset stomach. For some reason I just felt sick. I threw up three times before leaving for work, and wondered if I'd be able to make it through the day. I even brought a plastic bag into my classroom, just in case the worst should happen and I couldn't make it out in time. I couldn't eat breakfast and I only had a few mouthfuls of lunch.

My day ended with me eating a wide variety of weird and sometimes disgusting raw seafood.

Now, as I've blogged previously, I've eaten a few strange things in Japan, mostly of the horumon (offal) variety. Chicken heart, intestines, liver, tongue, heart, fish fins (eaten like potato chips), diaphragm, raw horse, sea urchin, and raw octopus in wasabi. (The latter two were by far the worst.)

Tonight I can add substantially to my list.

Pete and I went out to a sashimi* restaurant with one of my favourite students, and his friend. I went for the company, not the food; I still felt a bit seedy and thought I wouldn't be eating much.

*(Sashimi is raw fish. As opposed to sushi, which is raw fish on rice, often with wasabi.)

So what did I eat? I tried whale, for the first time. We had whale sashimi, and deep-fried whale pieces. They were both really good. The deep-fried whale tasted a bit like deep-fried chicken (same type of deep-frying as 'karaage') but the meat was softer. The whale sashimi was pink, it looked much like raw tuna. Dipped in soy sauce, topped with negi and daikon, it was tasty.

I had raw fugu, sliced very thin, white and transparent. Again, dipped in soy sauce. Fugu is pufferfish, and is famous for being that dish which is fatally poisonous if prepared incorrectly. Apparently, fugu is most poisonous in its liver. And naturally, it's the meat closest to the liver which is considered most delicious. So only specially licensed chefs who attained certificiation are allowed to prepare fugu.

Then came the shirako. What to say about shirako??
Just look at this picture.

That's shirako.

When it came out, I thought we were getting fish stomach lining. Our student's friend really recommended this and liked the taste of it. When it came out, it really did look like raw stomach lining. But it wasn't stomach. To quote wikipedia, shirako is "the male genitalia of fish when they contain sperm".

I've never seen Pete quail before any dish, ever, but even he had to psych himself into this. Each piece is quite a big mouthful. The student and his friend watched expectantly. "It's delicious, right?" Pete disagreed, lunging for his beer. He remarked that it tasted exactly like what it was...

I refused to try a whole piece but had a minute amount. Actually, it was small enough that I could mostly only taste the sauce, which tasted nice enough, but the shirako was cold and slimy. I would not be talked into trying more sperm-filled testicles. Incredibly, the student and his friend ordered another dish of it to eat for themselves...

Somewhat nicer was ankimo - the liver of angler fish. This is something of a luxury dish, like foie gras. Pete and I mused that it tasted vaguely of canned salmon or canned tuna. "But much more expensive," pointed out our student somewhat indignantly, at which we hastened to say it was MUCH better than those things. I guess, being from Australia, I don't have much history of eating raw seafood, so I don't have much reference point to explain these tastes. All these raw seafood dishes are very unique-tasting.

I also enjoyed the river shrimp. They're really small shrimp, fried and crispy, and you just eat them whole, heads and antennae and all.

For me, the worst challenge of the night were the raw oysters. These things were huge. 'Milk of the sea' is what Japanese people call them, because they're creamy. And sea-y. The others each slurped theirs down in one huge, disgusting mouthful, but I had to dispose of mine in three bites. I wasn't planning to have one at all and I had to psych myself, for about five minutes each, into each mouthful. They were creamy, and slimy, and tasted like sea water and something indefinable.

After the raw oysters was the marginally better - mostly because it was smaller - frozen raw squid. I mean, small pieces of marinated raw squid, frozen like ice treats. Only once you start eating them, the ice melts away a bit and you just have the chewy, red, raw squid in your mouth.

Japan is weird sometimes.

Hakone

2008-11-10T05:54:00.001-08:00

Today I went to Yunessun in Hakone. Hakone's a popular day trip from Tokyo. It's in the mountains and has some nice scenery. At this time of year, it's wonderful because the autumn colours are perfect.

Anyway, in Hakone we went to Yunessun, which is a hot spring theme park. Unlike traditional hot springs, you wear a bathing suit. The indoor part of the park has a kind of ancient Mediterranean theme. They had a big, hot spring spa pool, various smaller spas and hot baths, including one full of roses, one with imported salt from the Dead Sea (you float in it really easily, but it stung my skin), a hot spring outdoor waterslide, a rose-scented spa and a traditional Roman bath.

They also had 'doctor fish', those same fish I got my feet eaten by in Oedo Onsen Monogatari. They weren't as intense as at Oedo though. Fewer fish, and more people. But, included in the entrance fee. ^_^

The outdoor part of the onsen was really cool. They had all these 'flavoured' hot springs. So you could go and bathe in coffee, red wine, green tea, sake, etc. The red wine spring was really pink! A few times each day they come and dump more coffee/wine/etc in the bath. We got splashed by coffee when they replaced that one. Fortunately, it wasn't especially crowded, and the autumn leaves surrounding us outdoors were really nice.

It was really quite cold - the maximum today was 13, and it was probably around 10 in the late afternoon - so we kind of moved from hot spring to hot spring very fast! There were also various hot spring waterfalls, and a charcoal

The park used the same 'wristband' system as Oedo. You get an electronic wristband when you enter, which can be scanned if you want to buy food etc within the park. That way you don't have to carry anything around with you.

It was good fun, and it was nice to see Hakone again, on better terms this time. The bus ride up to the park was really stunning.

Washing the dishes

2008-11-09T07:08:00.001-08:00

Housewife 1: My husband bought me a dishwasher. I was having problems with my hands. I had skin problem, so he bought a dishwasher.
Housewife 2: My husband bought me gloves...

Outings and work

2008-11-09T06:50:00.001-08:00

Next weekend is my birthday weekend and I wanted to do something interesting, but so far my plan is: get a haircut and get my visa status updated. The former task will be very enjoyable as I like my hairdresser a lot. The latter task fills me with a decided lack of enthusiasm. Three hours of waiting in that immigration office, followed by a merry trip to the ward office, is not appealing.

However, I'm bookending that weekend with two Fun Outings. Tomorrow I'm going to Hakone to a hot spring theme park. I'm really looking forward to this. It's getting nastily cold here, so it will be perfect for hot springs, and also a good chance to see the autumn leaves at their peak.

Then, in two weeks, I'm going on a day trip to Nagano, where the Winter Olympics were held. Tanoshimi! (I'm looking forward to it!)

I got my contract renewal offer. I'm going to think about it a bit more first to see if I change my mind (very possible) but so far am still inclined toward the 'renew for 3 months so I can enjoy next summer' idea.

Work has been quite busy lately. When I say 'quite', I mean 'very'. Three weeks ago I was super busy because we were organising a party for kids and one for adults. Two weeks ago I was super busy because I was planning heaps of 'special classes' of my own devising. (I rarely have to create my own classes.) Last week we offered a bunch of special classes. I taught classes on music, cooking, cultural differences, phone English, pronunciation, and Internet English.

It was good fun but a little stressful too. I think they went fairly well though. The last time I designed classes from scratch was for our 'fun day' in January. I could see a huge difference in quality. That's the difference between having two months' teaching experience, and having one year's teaching experience.

From this week, I'm back to 'normal', which is 30 classes a week! It's the fullest my schedule has ever been. I might have to start coming in a bit early because otherwise I rely on every second of my 'office hours' to prepare my kids' lessons, and that means I'm not very free to do other things like chat to students or help the office staff.

However, my lesson prep time for each class (except kids' lessons) is pretty low now, and I'm coming into the third time teaching some of the classes.

From this week I'll be teaching a short course of my own devising. It will require some extra work and so far only one student has signed up. So I really hope a few more will join. Fingers crossed!

From this week I'll also have a new challenge in the form of two new students for my little kids' class. Until now it's been two children, but this week two more are joining. I'll have four children aged 2-3 in the room with me, no parents. (This is theoretically the idea, but one girl won't stay in the room without her mum.)

I can't honestly say I am a natural at working with small children, and I'm not sure how it will work, having more children than hands (before, I could do things like open both children's books at once). My progress in learning how to teach little kids has mostly consisted of figuring out how to remove distractions. (For example, clearing all the 'fun' toys out of the lobby before they come, hiding stickers so they don't find them and go nuts, putting all my extra materials in a box so they are not playing with everything at once, etc.)

Still, I think it will work out okay. It will probably be a little shaky at first, but after that, it might even be better than now, because both the new students seemed to be a lot better at following instructions and participating in activities, so they could set a good tone for the class. ^_^